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21 Stats and Facts - Women & the Workplace

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NLRB: Don't Go Overboard On Social Media Policy

Establishing a policy about the use of social media in the workplace, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ is a complicated but necessary task for any employer.

Many companies are using social media in the workplace to their advantage. Sites like LinkedIn are invaluable tools for recruitment, lead development, and sales. Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, and Google+ are powerful marketing tools. Yammer and Salesforce.com are building employee engagement.

But social media doesn’t come without its problems. While the rewards are great, the path is littered with landmines.

Employers need to be concerned about employees using social media in the workplace for personal and other non-productive reasons. Some employers consider social media to be a complete waste of time and resources, an invitation for confidentiality leaks, and a recipe for PR disaster. This reasoning has led to bans on social media in the workplace. These bans are intended to keep employees focused and decrease the improper use of a company's technology resources. But while bans may lessen employee abuse and wasted bandwidth, a social media blockade has its drawbacks. The effect on morale, especially in a young workforce is profound.  For employees working long hours, Facebook and Twitter are the only way for them to stay in touch with friends and relatives. Psychologists have shown that the ability to use social media in the workplace is a valuable stress reduction tool that can improve employee performance.

There are also costs associated with enforcing a ban on using social media in the workplace. Having managers peering over employees’ shoulders is inefficient and non-productive – a solution that might be more wasteful and costly than the employees’ use of social media itself. There are software programs designed to block access to social media sites and track employee behavior, but these need to be purchased, installed, and maintained. But these costs might be a drop in the bucket relative to the effect on employee morale and engagement. 

Nor are these safeguards foolproof. Many of these programs can be circumvented. And without confiscating every employee’s mobile devices, locking down social media is like locking the doors but leaving the windows open. Companies should focus on how employees can use social media for the good of the company, not build a bureaucracy around controlling it. Several recent court and labor board decisions may be forcing employers’ hands too.

In one case, an employee was fired for posting complaints about her employer and manager on Facebook. In considering the case, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that employers cannot ban workers from using social media in the workplace to discuss working conditions, wages, and hours with coworkers and others.

However, the National Labor Relations Board does not protect all employees who are disciplined or terminated for comments made online. The NLRB protects communications made when they concern group action by employees, action on behalf of another employee, or complaints to coworkers about the employer. As an example, a caregiver brought a complaint to the NLRB after she was fired for making online comments that demeaned and insulted the mentally ill patients she was supposed to be caring for. The NLRB ruled that this was not protected.

Employers also need to be concerned about managers using social media in the workplace when hiring. Looking at a candidates Facebook profile can reveal information about his or her sex, age, ethnicity, family situation, religion health, and politics. Even if a decision is not based on this information, knowing it can expose the employer to allegations of discrimination.

The myriad of issues surrounding the use of social media in the workplace mandate that responsible employers have a well thought-out policy that makes the most out of social media, without exposing the company to unnecessary risks.

8 Stats and Facts - High School Dropouts

1. Each year nearly four million kids begin ninth grade.  Nearly 1 million of them don't make it to graduation. That’s nearly one out of every four students fail to graduate.
2. A fifth of schools identified by the U.S. Department of Education are identified as "dropout factories," where no more than 50 percent of students graduate.
3. The unemployment rate for people without a high school diploma is nearly twice that of the general population.
4. Over a lifetime, a high school dropout will earn $200,000 less than a high school graduate and almost $1 million less than a college graduate.
5. Dropouts are more likely to commit crimes, abuse drugs and alcohol, become teenage parents, live in poverty and commit suicide.
6. Dropouts cost federal and state governments hundreds of billions of dollars in lost earnings, welfare and medical costs, and billions more for dropouts who end up in prison.
7. Almost half a million black teenagers drop out of school each year. Most will end up unemployed by their mid-30s. Six out of 10 black male dropouts will spend time in prison.
8. The single biggest reason why girls drop out of school is pregnancy. 41 percent of Latinas leave high school because they get pregnant. These young women often end up with few job skills, more pregnancies and dependency on unreliable and sometimes violent men.

Read more about The High Cost of Dropping Out

Millennials: Are Trophy Kids Getting a Bad Rap?

Sensationalism in the media and countless books (including my own) about differences between the generations paint a picture about the emerging Millennials that might be more myth than right.

Today's workforce is comprised of Baby Boomers (born 1945-1965), Generation X (born 1965-1980) and Millennials. There are more than 80 million Millennials, also called Generation Y in the U.S. alone and while many of them are already in the workforce, the rest are on the verge of entering it.

For those of you who still get confused between Gen Y, Gen WHY, Generation Y, and the Millennials, here’s a reminder: These titles all describe the same group of young adults and teens born between the early 1980s and the late 1990s.  They have also been described aptly as the Digital Generation but not so kindly as the Trophy Kids.  If you have read anything recently or managed these young workers, you might have learned that these Millennials expect preferential treatment and may be difficult to manage.

  
New York Post film critic Kyle Smith's recent review on the movie Final Destination 5 includes his opinion about this young generation.  Mr. Smith, along with a long list of authors, experts, and business consultants before him apparently find the Trophy Kids moniker a glove-like fit:

Young adults born in the 1980s and early 1990s leaped out of nicotine- and alcohol-free wombs to be deemed geniuses every time they passed a test, awarded trophies every time they caught a ball and tucked into comfy car seats on the victory ride over to their favorite sushi palace.

 

They took groovy public-service internships at an age when their grandfathers were sweating on assembly lines or being shot at by Nazis, lived with their parents until they were 28, then proceeded directly to their shrinks for marathon weeping sessions every time they messed up a project at work. They're as soft as pudding, and they know it. The Greatest Generation didn't need triathlons or X-treme skateboarding; every Friday night was a thrill ride after manual labor and eight Schlitzes.

While Smith’s perspective might be true for many Millennials, it certainly doesn’t fit all. I for one - an older Baby Boomer - can identify just as many of my peers (Baby Boomers) whose entitlement and “soft-as-pudding” attitudes fit Smith’s opinion of Millennials more than they do the hard-working, self-sacrificing memories of Industrial Age and pre-World War II generations.  

Mr. Smith concludes his review with “Previous generations constructed an amazing world -- but nothing new gets built anymore, and now all the old stuff is being held together by rust.”  That might be true.  They did build an amazing world but it’s not the Millennial’s fault that “all the old stuff is being held together by rust.”  Millennials, and Generation X to some degree, didn’t allow it rust - the older generations did.  Granted, the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers built much of our infrastructure but then left it to younger generations to figure out how to maintain and/or replace it. While the argument might be made that subsequent generations are responsible for maintaining what prior generations build.

But not a single Millennial can be held responsible for slashed budgets that cut out funding for maintaining the old and replacing with new.  And they aren’t responsible for the screwed up educational system they passed through, underfunded entitlement programs they inherited, and no-lose-everyone-is-a-winner games they played in. In fact, the older generations “built” this younger generation and now complains incessantly about what they created and their inability and/or unwillingness to fix the mess they inherited.

Our world also has evolved from a time when productivity was measured by brawn to a world where brain power is the new economic engine. While we do need manual labor to build and re-build our infrastructure, the next chapter of our amazing world will be written by those who “know-how,” not by those that “can-do.” Ironically, this story and the opinions of others like Smith is nothing new. 

Older generations have been complaining about younger generations since the beginning of time. According to a new report released by Kenexa:

Upstart generations and their sometimes brash attitudes and behaviors have long been a cause for consternation among older generations....While the sound bites proclaiming the differences between the Millennials are voluminous, scientific research is scarce....we are still not sure if Millennials are any different than any other generation when they were young.

The Kenexa WorkTrends study, by tracking more than 25 years of opinions, refutes the “malcontent” stereotype: Millennials are more positive than both Gen Xers and Baby Boomers. The study reveals important trends that have significant implications for company recruitment, engagement, and retention strategies.

Sixty percent of Millennials also say they are strongly satisfied with their organization as a place to work. Even more - 63 percent -report that they have opportunity for growth and development at their company. When it comes to pay, 42 percent of Millennials say they are paid fairly, compared to 41 percent for boomers and 38 percent for Generation X.  While those results are not something to celebrate, the Millennials do not feel more jilted or satisfied than older generations.

The study also examined attitudes about leaving their current organization for better opportunities. Thirty-one percent of Millennials working today are considering leaving their job while 27 percent of Generation X is looking too.  Nineteen percent of Baby Boomers were looking too. But if you look back to 1990, 31 percent of 27 year old Generation Xers were considered leaving their organization, identical to today’s Millennials.

There is no question that the attitudes and characteristics of one generation may differ from another. But in the end, many of the differences attributed to a generation are really just typical of youth regardless of the decade in which they were raised.

What do you think?  Are the Millennials a generation that will force the world to conform to their values or is their behavior just past history repeating itself? 

7 Workforce Stats and Facts - Employment Trends

I'm introducing a new weekly feature with this blog post. Not a day goes by that I don't find a statistic, trend, or fact about workforce trends. Some are compelling, others are intriquing, and a few are just curious. Most of the time I share my findings on one of my blogs or in my newsletter. But like the great chef, I hate to see good "food" go to waste. Rather than discard them, I'm going to see what I can "cook" up each week that gets your attention. I hope these weekly stats and facts will hit the spot.

Employment Trends

1. In a survey of 2,000 companies earlier this year, McKinsey Global Institute, the think tank arm of the big consulting firm, found 58% of employers expect to have more part-time, temporary or contract workers over the next five years and 21.5% more "outsourced or offshored" workers.
2. A May study from McKinsey & Co. found that by 2018, the U.S. will face a shortage of 1.5 million managers who can use data to shape business decisions.
3. About 25 million people in the world's 30 richest countries will have lost their jobs between the end of 2007 and the end of 2010 as the economic downturn pushes most countries into recession.
4. Men account for at least 7 of 10 workers who lost jobs, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
5. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says there are 25.3 million Americans over age 25 without high-school diplomas: Only 9.8 million, or less than 40% of them, were working in June.
6. The unemployment rate for adults 25 years and over with a bachelor’s degree and higher remains constant at 4.4%, below the baseline of full employment.
7. For adults over 25 with less than a high school education, the unemployment rate is 14.3; with only a high school diploma, the rate is 10% with not much light at the end of the tunnel. For teenagers between 16 and 19 years old, the rate nears 25%.

 

62% of Employee Caregivers Distracted; Presenteeism on the Rise

A working Mom or Dad just a few years ago struggled with juggling business with parenting responsibilities. But an aging population, dispersed family members, and young adults waiting longer to start a family have thrown a third pin into the juggling routine. Now millions of Americans are taking care of aging relatives too. These added responsibilities are beginning to take their toll on even the most dedicated employees.

While on the surface the problem of the caregiver seems to be a personal one, its impact has a much more insidious and pervasive effect in the workplace.

Caregivers often face difficult, stress-inducing decisions about how to allocate time, money, and resources. The situation is exacerbated when the employee is a working Baby Boomer or older Generation X who is sandwiched between both the ailing parent and school aged children. This group of adults caring for both parents and children is being called The Sandwich Generation.

Caregiver distraction is having a growing impact upon productivity. For example, consider a day in the life of the typical employee caregiver.

Often the “average” worker is a female in her mid-40s with two school aged children.  Mom or Dad, possibly in his or her 70s and 80s, live several hundred miles away. For whatever reason – only child, oldest sibling, most affluent, most caring, etc. – this individual has been designated caregiver for her parents.  During the typical day of scheduled meetings with clients, the employee is interrupted by 2 or 3 phone calls from the home care worker dealing with Mom’s dementia and running Dad to his doctor’s appointment. When the parent’s nurse calls to report a problem or a child is hurt or sick, focus at work is shifted anywhere but on the job. Those interruptions don’t even include the texts and phone calls from children and spouses/partners.

The term for this physically present but emotionally distracted worker is presenteeism. If presenteeism was incidental and occasional, employers would have no worries.  The bad news is that this situation repeats itself every day in nearly every workplace and the cost of presenteeism resulting from working caregivers is escalating rapidly. The average cost per employee for those with intense caregiving responsibilities is $2,441.The total estimated cost to employers for all full-time, employed caregivers is $33.6 billion. (Source: AgingInfo USA)

A new study by the AARP estimates that 1 in 4 American Adults are providing care for an aging loved one. Not all these adults are employed, but a growing percentage of workers are.  More than 62 percent of these employee caregivers say that they make workplace adjustments such as arriving late, leaving early, taking leaves of absence, and changing their status to part-time.

The proportion of adult children providing personal care and/or financial assistance to a parent has more than tripled over the past 15 years. The AARP study also finds that family members spend an average 20 hours a week providing care.  Overall, caregiving sons and daughters provide comparable care in many respects, but daughters are more likely to provide basic care and sons are more likely to provide financial assistance.

For the more than 40 million Americans caring for an elderly or disabled loved one, the value of their work is $450 billion a year.  The toll borne by caregivers isn’t just financial either.

Adult children 50 years and older who work and provide care to a parent are more likely to have fair or poor health than those who do not provide care to their parents. Thirty-one percent of adult caregivers report stress, anxiety, or depression. The added caregiving responsibilities can add as much as 8 percent in health care costs for employers. Seventy percent also report making work accommodations due to caregiving; and 53% say that they lose time with friends and family.

Employers face a multitude of challenges in managing and growing a productive workforce. An increase in caregiving responsibilities is insidiously affecting the performance of millions of working adults. The additional personal responsibilities can distract even the most dedicated and committed employee.

In an effort to help caregivers find a balance, the AARP and the National Family Caregivers Association provide a lot of tips and resources, and the MetLife Mature Market Institute offers a list of financial considerations.

10 Jobs On Life Support

A recession, outsourcing, and foreign competition aren't the only reasons we're losing jobs. Dramatic advancements in technology and movements like lean manufacturing and 6 Sigma have more than doubled worker productivity since 1970.

Our manufacturing industry has progressed from making simple household appliances, cars and textiles to producing cutting-edge medical technologies, life-saving medicines and light-speed computer processors with worldwide demand.
The result is an economy that has become leaner and meaner in order to become more competitive and efficient. Cutbacks and downsizings have been painful for millions of people. Unfortunately the pain will continue for the foreseeable future, especially for workers in 10 middle class jobs. These middle-class professions may soon face the fate of the milk man, the telegraph operator, the stagecoach driver and the switchboard operator, joining them in obsolete-job heaven.

Machinists: Job vacancies for machinists will shrink by 5% but they will likely still exist, because they require a very specialized skillset to fill the position.

Front-Line Supervisors/Managers of Production and Operators: Without assembly line workers, there are fewer workers to supervise.

Farmers and Ranchers: Farmers and ranchers will see the largest total number of job losses of any profession by 2018.

Computer Operators: Nearly one in five of the computer operators that are around today will move out of the profession in the next seven years.

Paper Goods Machine Setters, Operators and Tenders: Expect one in five of these workers to find another profession in the next few years.

Desktop Publishers: Only 20,400 desktop publishers are expected to remain employed in 2018, a precipitous drop of 23%.

Fabric and Apparel Patternmakers: Expect wages to decline by a whopping 48% in this industry and the number of patternmakers dwindling to a mere 6,000 in the next few years, a decline of 27%.

Wellhead pumpers: Only 13,300 wellhead pumpers will be pumping oil by 2018, a decline of 28%.

Postal Service Mail Sorters, Processors and Processing Machine Operators:  Nearly one-third of the current Postal Mail Sorters, Processors, and PM Operators in today’s work force will not be working in that profession by 2018, a decline of 30%.

Semiconductors Processors: One in three semiconductor processors will be obsolete by 2018, a decline of 32%, the fastest decline of any position on the list.

If you are unemployeed but looking to get hired in one of these 10 jobs, good luck. You will have lots of competition and opportunities will be less. If you are employed, be careful. Keep your eyes and ears open for future trends and job opportunities.  All indicators point to further cutbacks in these positions with several jobs being eliminated altogether.

Source: Investing Answers

21st Century Jobs: High Demand Skills Can't Be Automated

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No Kidding Around - High Demand Jobs Do Exist

The first thing that comes to mind when you hear unemployment rates like 2.6%, 2.8%, and 3.8% must be memories of the good-old-days - pre-2007 recession. Well think again.

While we continue to hear a lot of depressing stories these days about the loss of jobs and slow job creation, demand for executive and management level talent remains high. According to the latest figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for chief executives, including chief financial officers, is 2.6 percent, followed by HR managers at 2.8 percent, accountants and auditors at 3.5 percent, and financial analysts at 3.8 percent. In fact, the unemployment rate for adults 25 years and over with a bachelor’s degree and higher remains constant at 4.4%, below the baseline of full employment.

That’s not to say we don’t have a problem. Actually we have a colossal crisis. Other segments of the population are undeniably in trouble.  For adults over 25 with less than a high school education, the unemployment rate is 14.3; with only a high school diploma, the rate is 10% with not much light at the end of the tunnel. For teenagers between 16 and 19 years old, the rate nears 25%.

But while net new job growth will undoubtedly remain slow for quite some time, the job creation engine has not stopped – new job creation just gets lost in all the bad news.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) still projects that the U.S. will add 15.3 million new jobs between 2008 and 2018.  What’s more, a whopping 15 out of 30 jobs with the most openings and vacancies will pay wages that are above the national median wage for all workers in the United States.

Here's a list of 10 in-demand careers in arm’s length of many unemployed or underemployed workers that will offer plenty of growth and pay well by 2018. That doesn’t mean the jobs will be offered in return for completing a few years of schooling or just completing an application. The bar has been raised: what qualified an individual to fill these positions just a few years might not meet the minimum requirements today. But with a little motivation, a positive attitude, and the right skills, there are employers ready to hire, especially in these areas.

Carpenters

Population growth, the retirement of older carpenters and the demand for new energy-efficient buildings will stimulate a great need for carpenters in the future. But those with the most training and ability to do more than just the simple tasks will have the steadiest workload. Projected New Job Openings by 2018: 165,400

Computer Software Engineer, Applications

Computer software engineers will be in high demand as computer networking among businesses continues to grow. Projected New Job Openings by 2018: 175,100

Management Analysts

Management Analysts, sometimes called "management consultants" are specialized masterminds who help organizations rearrange corporate structure or improve operations to increase efficiency and profits. Projected New Job Openings by 2018: 178,300

Executive Secretaries and Administrative Assistants

As highly skilled and communicatively tactful executive secretaries and administrative assistants are promoted or move on to even more professional jobs, there will be a significant demand for those who can fill their roles. Projected New Job Openings by 2018: 204,400

Bookkeeping, Accounting and Auditing Clerks

Because many of the current bookkeepers, accountants and auditing clerks are likely to retire or be promoted to higher levels of financial management, the amount of vacancies in this job in the next few years will be immense. Projected New Job Openings by 2018: 212,400

Truck Drivers (Heavy and Tractor-Trailer)

Truck drivers who drive the big rigs will be in high demand to ship everyday products to businesses and keep a stocked inventory. Projected New Job Openings by 2018: 232,900

Elementary School Teachers (Non-Special Education)

If you enjoy science, math, or foreign languages and think you have a knack for teaching kids, you are likely to find good opportunities upon your certification. Projected New Job Openings by 2018: 244,200

Postsecondary Teachers

Postsecondary education enrollment is expected to grow exponentially. Many of the professors hired in the 1960s and 1970s that taught baby-boomers are expected to retire soon, leaving those with Ph.Ds a great opportunity for employment.  Projected New Job Openings by 2018: 256,900

Accountants and Auditors

Plenty of accountants and auditors will be needed to fill positions in new businesses, keep up with ever changing financial laws and protecting an organization's shareholders through increased transparency in financial reporting. Projected New Job Openings by 2018: 279,400

Registered Nurses

With nearly twice as many projected job vacancies in the next seven years as accountants, registered nurses will be in very high demand as the immense baby boomer population ages and as experienced nurses retire. Projected New Job Openings by 2018: 581,500

Because these middle-class jobs will be in such high demand, they will be lucrative and secure for years to come. You may have to go back to school and get a certification once you've decided on a job that you're interested in, but it may be worth it if these projections are correct.

Source of in-demand job info: Investinganswers.com

Are Your Employees Cut Out for Virtual Work?

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