Get The Sickness!

The Competition for Employees

It's a whole new world we are operating in and demographics promise that the future will be very different as Boomers leave the work force and employers scramble to replace them with the following generation which is numerically smaller. Compounding the scarcity of educated competent employees are the changing attitudes about company loyalty and the increasing number of work alternatives. A recent survey of college students indicates an expectation to change jobs fairly frequently as they have grown up with parents and role models who have voluntarily or involuntarily changed jobs and companies with regularity. Employers are going to need to work harder at making companies more accommodating to their key employees.

Technology has enabled an increasingly large portion of the workforce to telecommute or work virtually. Job sharing and flex hours are also alternatives that are becoming more common. The increasing cost of gas and committing is also putting pressure on employees who live greater distances from their workplaces.

I recently had lunch with a VP of a Fortune 100 company who currently has over 25 direct reports and a travel schedule that has him away from home four days a week. This person is a high performing star who finds himself weighing the tradeoff's of a successful corporate job with the sacrifices he makes missing his pre teen children growing up. If this corporation and others like it don't make some changes to improve their workplace, they will find that their best and brightest will leave to pursue other opportunities that are open to them. Corporations that find that they are populated with employees who don't have more attractive options will find themselves in a poor competitive position.

Continued innovation in telecommuting, working virtually and creating environments that employees will find stimulating and productive on a sustainable basis are likely to be key success criteria of the most competitive companies. The "burn em and churn em" mentality never really worked. Continually replacing the more senior employees with younger, lower paid staff members is a losing proposition when you are competing with companies who understand how to leverage and retain their intellectual capital.

posted by Michael Sick @ 6:24 PM