Economics
The Impending Jobs Crisis
Corporations will increasingly compete for workers as they do for
customers.
By Cindy Wagner
y 2010, the United States will need more than 10 million additional workers,
predict business futurists Roger E. Herman, Tom G. Olivo, and Joyce L. Gioia in their new
book, Impending Crisis. Signs of the problems ahead are already appearing, as
hospitals turn away patients for lack of nurses, home-construction projects are delayed
for lack of designers, and lines at airports grow longer and longer for lack of trained
security professionals.
The 10-million-worker shortfall doesn't even address the growing
skills-gap problem, Herman, Olivo, and Gioia note. While a larger number of new jobs
require only on-the-job training, the fastest-growing occupations are those
requiring postsecondary education, either for a vocational certificate or an academic
degree. As economic growth continues to create these high-skill jobs at an accelerating
pace, giving talented workers their pick of employers, companies have given little thought
to positioning themselves to become the companies that skilled workers pick.
The crisis is the result of many converging and complex trends,
including demographic forces such as the sharp birthrate falloff after the postwar baby
boom. As the baby-bust generation matured in the 1990s, there were fewer workers competing
to fill slots on organizational charts, yet organizations failed to reengineer themselves
and went on hiring as many slot-fillers as they could. When reengineering became an
economic necessity, it led to downsizing--a wholesale slaughter to reduce payroll
levels--rather than changing the way work was done.
In the near future, a tidal wave of baby boomers (now ages 39 to 57)
will ebb out of their peak consumer-spending years, and the economy will most likely begin
to slow between 2009 and 2013. So corporate leaders should look harder at the long-term
picture, Herman, Oliva, and Gioia advise. One place to start looking is the cost of
employee turnover. Financial analysts are paying increasing attention to workforce
stability: "Uncomfortably high employee turnover can cause bond ratings to drop and
stock prices to tumble, threatening capitalization," the authors note. "The
shifting relationship between workforce and finance issues, something most corporate
executives have not watched carefully enough, could drive seemingly stable companies out
of business."
Waging an aggressive (and expensive) new recruiting war now might seem
the logical solution to the impending jobs crisis, but that could drive up prices for
customers who already feel gouged, forcing employers to shed workers (and their valuable
experience) later on. "Bottom line: A stable, productive workforce will be the
competitive advantage," according to the authors. "Corporate leaders must
recognize this fundamental fact and do everything in their power to attract, optimize, and
retain top talent. Workforce stability will be a strategic imperative."
To survive the worker crisis ahead, companies need to reinvent
themselves into the types of organizations that high-performing workers want to work for:
those that transcend the "traditional" images of bureaucratic, top-down,
innovation-resistant organizational management. Among the strategies of companies
"doing it right":
- Get senior executives out of their corner offices. The CEO of Baptist
Pensacola Hospital in Pensacola, Florida, works in an office with big windows just off the
main lobby, accessible to workers, visitors, and customers.
- Share information with everyone, not just those who "need to
know." A corkboard outside the Baptist Pensacola CEO's office displays performance
results, and all employees receive a daily newsletter (not just monthly).
- Hire selectively, in accordance with the organization's culture. Texas
Steakhouse and Saloon, a chain of casual-dining restaurants, recruits "positive
people who like to work hard and have fun"--not just "warm bodies" to keep
the jobs filled.
- Compensate unfairly--that is, reward high performance. Workers at
the Naples, Florida, Platinum Coast dry cleaners can earn $1 more per hour by exceeding
production standards, and customer service representatives earn bonuses for outstanding
performance.
Source: Impending Crisis: Too Many Jobs, Too Few People by Roger
E. Herman, Tom G. Olivo, and Joyce L. Gioia. Oakhill Press. 2003. 332 pages. Available
from the Futurist Bookstore for $30 ($27 for Society members), cat. no. B-2434. Click here to order.
