Manager's Corner - Train Your Shrinking Labor Pool

According to an article in the July 2006 issue of Benefits & Compensation Digest entitled: Balance Short-Term Profit with Long-Term Investment in Human Capital: "The Labor Department...recorded by 2008 the growth of the U.S. Workforce is projected to drop to near zero and remain at that level for the next 25 years. This is the consequence of a vast exodus of 79 millio
U.S. baby boomers who will retire from the workforce between 2010 and 2015. Hiring new employees will become more problematic as wages increase for the fewer people with the right skills."
Pretty sobering isn't it? However, for anyone paying attention to the news for the past several years, this shouldn't be new information. Just a reaffirmation of more challenges coming our way as employers. So how do we confront it?

First, we need to provide an environment that our employees want to be a part of -- now and in the future. We need to continue to create business environments our employees want to come to and participate in on a regular basis, versus a job they dread coming to each day. If they dread coming to work, they certainly will stop coming when they can retire or some other company lures them away with more money. We can improve our work environment for our employees through any number of ways -- depending upon what our respective organization and employees need.

We may need to simply physically, clean-up the place. This sounds petty to many, but I can't tell you the number of times I've had to strongly recommend to clients that before they spend any money on consultants and other experts to "fix their employees," they'd increase their return on any such investment if they first cleared away the gathered clutter, bought filing cabinets, threw away broken equipment that was stock-piled in corners, organized their inventory and supplies, and hired a janitorial service to regularly clean the facility -- particularly the restrooms.

We can also improve our working environment for our employees by holding ourselves and all employees accountable to abide by the Values of our company -- day in and day out. Again, this sounds touchy-feely to some of you, but after working with various organizations for 20 years, I've seen the attitudes and focus in employees shift positively, when they know and understand what standards of performance and behavior they will be held to -- and then are.

Second, we need to provide continuous, serious training to our current employees to keep them engaged, in-step with technology, and learning new aspects of our business' operations. A recent study by Korn/Ferry showed that 51% of the executives surveyed indicated they were at least "Likely" to choose a different career field, because it provided the possibility of learning something new.

Other studies are also indicating that more people nearing retirement are planning to continue to work -- at least on a part-time basis to keep engaged, learning, and "current." Given this, doesn't it make sense to provide additional opportunities for our employees to learn new and challenging skills with us instead of having a competitor hire them away?

Again, there are no easy answers. But if we start to prepare now for the serious challenges ahead, we and our employees will find solutions to work around the shrinking labor pool.

Copyright 2008,2006 - Liz Weber, CMC - Weber Business Services, LLC.
WBS is a team of Strategic Planning and Leadership Development Consultants, Trainers, and Speakers. Liz can be reached at liz@wbsllc.com or (717)597-8890.
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