Perfect Labor Storm 2.0

Big Mac, fries, soda and a job application, please.

Communities hungry for work turn out at McDonald's in force for its National Hiring Day. The chain is looking to hire 50, 000 across the U.S. At this uniquely American institution, they came hoping to claim or reclaim the American dream.

A first job. A new job. A second chance.

Across the midstate Tuesday, hundreds of people poured into their local McDonald's restaurants to fill out applications as part of the chain's National Hiring Day event.

Kamika Banks, 38, and her fiance, Christopher Williams, 32, have been out of work for more than a year.

They heard about the hiring day on the news and spent the day driving to different locations, filling out applications.

"It's been hard for us to get jobs," Banks said. "There's a lot of us out here that need jobs, and that's why I'm here." The hiring blitz comes on the back of a banner year for the Oak Brook, Ill.-based chain.

It's reach again grew, marking eight straight years of growth, according to the company's 2010 annual report. In the U.S. alone, sales increased 38 percent and customer visits were at an all-time high.

The salaries for the positions vary, from at or just above the $7.25 an hour minimum wage for teens seeking their first jobs, to managerial jobs with higher salaries and benefits.

Ira Wolfe, owner of Success Performance Solutions, a pre-employment testing firm with offices in Lancaster and Maryland, said there is a disconnect between jobs being offered and skills proffered by the jobless.

While it might seem odd that a nation of 15 million unemployed or underemployed people needs a nudge to fill any position, it's not that simple, Wolfe said.

"I saw one survey that said it takes 826 candidates to find one good employee," Wolfe said. "There are people who apply who have bad attitudes, people who are not cut out for customer service.

There are a lot of jobs available, but the job market we had going into the recession is not the same as it is going out of it. A lot of people who are unemployed don't have skills to work in the service industry." A company like McDonald's, which has a good reputation for employee development and talent retention, is likely not only on the lookout for the fry cooks and counter help of today with this hiring push, Wolfe said. It's also sizing up the next generations of store and even corporate leaders.

At the Kline Village location across from Harrisburg High School, more than 100 people applied in four hours, said Peter Ballantine, owner/operator of Ballantine Restaurants.

The company, which owns stores in Harrisburg, Hershey and Lebanon - including the Kline Village location - was also taking applications online, he said. In all, Ballantine said he needs 50 people. McDonald's is looking to hire a thousand times that many nationwide.

Sisters Mariam and Ifrah Mohamud, ages 17 and 15, and their cousin, 17-year-old Hamdi Farah, all of Harrisburg, are hoping they are among those chosen.

Their families came as refugees from Somalia about five years ago. The restaurant is steps from their school, and with one car to share, they're hoping to get the same shifts, too.

"We want to help our families and get experience for life," Ifrah said.

Kim Feehrer of South Hanover Twp. started as a clerk behind the counter at the Hershey McDonald's when she was 15.

Now 38, she runs that restaurant and supervises another. She spent the better part of Tuesday standing near the soda machine, interviewing candidates and taking notes.

Feehrer said she came to the restaurant because it seemed a better alternative than sweeping up at Hersheypark that long-ago summer.

She stayed because not only did she discover her talent for talking to people and working as a team, she found an employer willing to invest in her success, she said.

"They flew me to Chicago to attend Hamburger U - all expenses paid. To Las Vegas; I'm going to Florida," Feehrer said. "It's more than just burgers and fries. I get to direct input into a multibilliondollar company."

Source: Patriot-News, April 20, 2011

 

What If Lack Of Jobs Isn't The Cause Of High Unemployment?

You would think that a headline screaming “Percent Working Lowest Since ‘83” would blame the recession, President Obama, or Congress. To many people, it would make sense. Someone has to take the fall. There was no reason to read further.

Unfortunately the headline does not tell the real story. So in the words of Paul Harvey, “here’s the rest of the story.”

While no one could argue that part of the reason for only 45.4 percent of Americans working in 2010 was the recession, the loss of jobs since 2007 only accelerated what many anticipated would happen regardless of the economy (including yours truly) – an overall decline in the percentage of working adults to dependents.  Had employers, bureaucrats, and politicians paid the slightest bit of attention, this USA Today front page headline would be a mere footnote. The real truth is that the headline and story could have been written 20 years ago when this event was first predicted.

For example, the current percentage of Baby Boomers to U.S. population is 13 percent. By 2030, the number increases to over 20 percent of the population with 71 million people aged 65 or older. While Baby Boomers will work longer, they will work less … and collect Social Security and use Medicare.  Eventually all Baby Boomers will become dependent on the working age population.

Since 1900, the number of older adults has increased eleven-fold, from 3.1 million in 1900 to 35 million in 2000. In 2010 one of every five employees was aged 55 or older. By the middle 21st century, there will be more seniors than children. That statistical milestone is less than 40 years away.

The statistics alone may be startling but a picture is worth a thousand numbers!  In my book The Perfect Labor Storm 2.0 and hundreds of presentations about it, I use a
population pyramid so demonstrate what’s happening to our workforce and why I’m shocked anyone continues to be surprised at headlines like the one published in the USA Today.

 

I also describe the population shift in this video.

My colleague John Sumser in a recent article also did a great job of describing the population pyramid.  “For the entire history of the human race, with virtually no exceptions. the age distribution of population has had the shape of a pyramid. As people get older, there are fewer of them. The pyramid shape means that there are few old people and lots of young people. The older that people get, the more of them die.”

That population pyramid model lasted for centuries.  But as he wrote, “important parts of our world no longer resemble a pyramid. While life expectancy was growing, the average number of people in a family has been declining rapidly...More old people and fewer kids (proportionately) means that the so-called pyramid no longer resembles a pyramid in the US and all of the industrialized world.”

That shift from a people pyramid to a silo means that the bulk of those people not working changed from children to adults. Not only does that imply more Social Security, Medicare, and pension costs, but fewer people working to support a growing dependent population. Likewise the cost of supporting more older people than younger ones has substantial economic implications, $500,000 caring for a senior compared to $125,000 educating a child.

This demographic shift is happening quicker too.  In 2000 the U.S. had roughly the same number of children and non-working adults. Since then, the population of non-working adults has grown 27 million while the nation added just 3 million children under 18.

Age isn’t the only factor causing the lower labor participation rate.  Men have been leaving the workforce for decades. In 1960, more than 80 percent of men worked.  Today just 66.8 percent of men are working. Concurrently, the female participation rate jumped from 36 percent in 1960 to 56 percent in 2010. While the increase is certainly dramatic, lost in the translation is that the female participation rate leveled off in 1995.

The implications for employers are enormous. Shortages of workers moving forward will come in the form of quantity and quality. As challenging as recruitment is today, employers are just experiencing the tip of an iceberg.

Managing Older Workers: A Solution For Skilled Worker Shortage

The nightmare that is plaguing many companies as the economy recovers is the lack of skilled workers. There is no one cause for the shortages but a significant driver is the loss of Baby Boomer brain power.  But the good news is that there can be a happy ending.

One company that is doing an exceptional job at managing their aging workforce is the National Rural Electric Co-operative Association (NRECA).  I’m very proud to say that NRECA and many of their members have been clients of my company Success Performance Solutions for several years. So I was thrilled today when I turned the page in The Economist and saw their success story about how they are managing their aging workforce. The NRECA story isn’t only about well-deserved recognition but it serves as a model that other companies can use too.

The shortage of skilled worker problem is already acute in many industries like healthcare, aerospace, energy, and even technology. It has been exacerbated by a failure to plan, despite ample warning, about the impact of aging Baby Boomers.
The article in The Economist cites The Sloan Centre on Ageing and Work at Boston College survey which found that 40% of employers worry that the ageing of the workforce will have a negative or very negative impact on their business. And yet despite this dismal warning, another survey last year by two British management institutes found that only 14 percent of managers think that their workplaces are prepared to cope with the greying of the workforce.

A significant number of older workers also became collateral damage as a result of how employers managed the recession. Many aging workers were forced to take early retirement while others were told to leave before the door hit them on their behinds. In either case, companies lost not only basic skills required to run their business but all the unwritten knowledge that swirled in and between the heads of veteran workers. Now many companies are finding that replacing one old body with a younger model isn’t very effective when life’s experience and maturity are ignored.

How did NRECA do it?  First of all, they recognized that couldn’t change long-term demographic trends. They could however respond differently and more effectively. The NRECA chose to see older workers as part of their modern workforce, not drags on productivity and performance and costs associated with healthcare costs and benefits.

But setting the strategy and implementing well are two different things.  After all the literature and Internet are filled with stories about the rigidity, curmudgeon attitude, and poor technology skills of older workers. References abound too how older workers just don’t have the physical ability to meet the physical requirements of many jobs. While that might be true, more jobs these days require more brain than brawn: according to the Urban Institute think tank, 46 percent of jobs in America require little if any physical demand.

And despite Millennials like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg changing the way we communicate, several aging Baby Boomers like Steve Jobs (Apple). Larry Ellison (Oracle), and John Chambers (Cisco) can hardly be dismissed as non-relevant in the world of technology even today. Besides according to a recent study by the Kauffman Foundation, Americans aged 55-64 have launched more businesses than those aged 20-34 in every year since 1996.

But as The Economist author aptly notes, “None of this means that adjusting to an ageing workforce will be easy. Companies will need to rethink the traditional career ladder that linked seniority to pay and power.” They will also have to address the dramatic differences in work-life attitudes between the aging Baby Boomers, the trapped cohort of Generation X, and the emerging Generation Y workers.

The statement that caught the most attention was that companies and people must learn to “treat retirement as a process rather than a sudden event.” That solution seems to be a great fit for both the business that can’t afford to go cold turkey when a skilled Baby Boomer retires and for the Baby Boomer who willingly wants to continue working or is forced to work for financial reasons.

Congratulations NRECA!  And for all the other employers who expect to remain in business have no choice but to learn how to deal with a rapidly aging workforce just like NRECA.

4 Trends That Changed The Role of Women at Work

This page has been moved to http://www.perfectlaborstorm.com/2011/workforce-trends/4-trends-that-changed-the-role-of-women-at-work/

Stop, Look, & Listen...Before You Write That Social Media Policy

If you have no idea what Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn is, how can you expect to write a social media policy that will properly embrace ...or limit its use?  Before you can write a social media policy, stop, look, and listen - take a tour around the social "mediasphere." What you don't know about social media can hurt you. 

To write a good policy that protects the company but doesn't suffocate, stakeholders need to spend time exploring each site. Management, IT, and Human Resources (HR) must invest time to understand that social media is much more than just Facebook. 

Social media is not just a bunch of  idle chatter and noise.  Social media is a new mode of communication, just as the telephone was just 100 years ago. The technology includes applications and software such as blogging, video, podcasts, wikis, and even review sites such as Amazon and Yelp. If a site allows a visitor to share their experience and leave comments, it falls under the sweeping umbrella called social media...and customers and job candidates are spending a lot of time using social media to make buying and career decisions. 

Writing a policy that can be enforced without stifling productivity and morale requires that you understand it, as well as the type of culture that embraces it. For example, to the non-user, Facebook and Linkedin appear quite similar.  Aside from getting invitations to friend and connect from people you don't know, both sites allow you to post status updates, develop a network, and interact in groups.  But once you begin to engage with your connections and peruse the site, you get a very different feel for its capabilities and possibilities.  

Facebook to date is a great place for socializing.  However when planned and executed correctly, it's an even better place to build a community of raving fans.  Linkedin, on the other hand, is a professional networking site which allows business people to expand their networks, to generate leads, to recruit candidates, and to engage in professional development. Strategically both sites offer significant possibilities but the choice isn't as simple as either-or.  For some companies, one site or the other might be the right choice. For others, the right decision will be embracing both. 

Once you have toured each site, it is important to sit down with decision makers and stakeholders to define what it is that you want the policy to accomplish. Management , IT, and HR must put aside their personal biases and agendas.  The question on the table should be "how can we make social media work for us," not "what can we do to crush it."  Stakeholders at the table might also include customers, vendors, and suppliers.  Explore how you might be able to utilize employees and other partners' personal accounts in order to gain a larger following...and set up the policy accordingly.  If you decide to separate what happens at work from what happens on personal accounts, your policy needs to express that too. But be careful - you might be able to control what happens at work; but what happens off-the-click is a different story. 

You also want to find how many and what kind of policies you want to put into place. Internal employee policies only cover one aspect of good social media guidelines that will protect an organization. To complete the puzzle, there are 3 more pieces: (1) internal organization,(2) external audience, and (3)safety, security, and regulations.  Ignoring one piece without addressing the others will only lead to breaches in your efforts to minimize the risks. Though it would be easier to have one all-encompassing policy, it is much more helpful to isolate what is acceptable for each network.   

Each of these social media aspects has its own set of pros and cons. Ultimately what you decide to do - embrace it or limit it - must consider the impact it might have on your business strategy and how it might represent your organizational culture. 

Disclosure: The information provided in these guidelines is not legal advice. I am NOT an attorney (although my wife says I argue like one!) An employer should seek legal advice from an experienced employment law attorney before finalizing its guidelines to make sure the guidelines express the employer's intent and don't run afoul of any employment laws.

72 Percent of Employers Struggle to Fill Jobs

A weekly poll posted on SmartPulse asked: Do you have openings at your company that you struggle to fill? 

• Yes, 72%
• No, 28%

Employers....do you agree?  What positions are you finding the hardest to fill? What are the biggest skill gaps?

More Articles about:

The New Odd Couple: Skilled Worker Shortages and High Unemployment

Read more: http://hrblog.typepad.com/perfect_labor_storm/2011/03/the-new-odd-couple-skilled-worker-shortages-and-high-unemployment.html#ixzz1IUC3MGPq
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