Workforce Development - A Good Investment?

When Location Matters

Hint - it ALWAYS matters!

When businesses go looking for an "ideal" location, you'll often hear that it's all about the quality of the workforce.  While that is always true, it's an oversimplification.

In reality, the workforce is only one of many factors that influence where to locate,, or where to expand. The major factors usually taken into consideration include:

1. Workforce
2. Taxes
3. Economic Incentives
4. Quality of Life
5. Operating Costs and
6. Real Estate

These factors provide business owners with a two level scale of "goodness of fit"

• Quantitative (Demographic, Workforce, Quality of Life) and
• Qualitative (Wages, Taxes, Utility Rates)

The elements also have differing weights, based upon the level of needs.  For example, a a foundry would be looking for a much different skillset, incentive and real estate package than a biotech firm, or a highway construction company.

Workers also look at similar elements when seeking out their future employer.  And they do so on multiple levels (Level 1 - what is important to me for the job I am considering, and Level 2 - once I am ready to change employment again, and wish to stay in the area, what other aspects of the location would compel me to stay in the area?)

Thus, each factor related to attracting and keeping a qualified workforce needs to have a similar perspective (an owners perspective) as well.  Bearing in mind that today we live in a global market for most commodities and skills, it's no longer sufficient to just try to match job titles.  Today's workers understand that they have more options available, so the employers job of "selling" the overall package must reflect these changing times.

Are you measuring the economic impacts of Skill Shortages?

One of the most common items I'm asked about when I present to groups is how the "skilled labor shortage" impact can be measured.   Great questions !

When organizations discover that they have skill shortages, there are a number of quantitative and qualitative ways that this impact can be measured.

• Reduced production output or sales
• Lowered overall productivity
• Reduced product or service quality
• Prevented firm from expanding its facilities
• Prevented firm from developing new products/services
• Caused firm to move some operations out of state

Are any of these impacts minuscule?  No way!  The better question is how many of these metrics do you currently measure today?

The Fastest-Growing Jobs Are Due to WHO?

Baby boomers refashioned politics, changed music and continue to exert influence over the U.S. economy. Is it any wonder that many of the fastest-growing jobs in the U.S. owe their proliferation to aging boomers?
Between now and 2014, seven of the 10 fastest-growing jobs in the U.S. will be in health care, (17 of top 30 fastest-growing jobs)

read more | digg story

If your HR efforts have been slaughtered, call CSI

When your recruitment and retention efforts aren't working the way you expected them to, sometimes a forensic analysis will enable you to figure out what's "broken"

Not familiar with this approach?  Read on....

read more | digg story

It would appear that they AREN'T ready to work

Mark Schoeff Jr. over at Workforce Management published a brief entitled Skills Of Recent U.S. High School Graduates Leave Employers Cold that references previous posts in this blog about the report, “Are They Really Ready to Work?”

What's interesting about Mark's update is what has happened since this report was published. Workforce advocates came to  in late March to get the attention of Congress on what they call an urgent problem with the labor market: High school graduates are deficient and those with a college education only adequate in key skills employers are demanding to cope with global economic competition.

In a March 28 Capitol Hill briefing, the groups presented findings from their poll of about 400 companies showing that new entrants to the U.S. workforce generally disappoint those who would like to give them their first job. High school-educated workers lack the level of ability employers seek in everything from writing and work ethic to oral communication. Twenty-three percent to 27 percent of respondents said college graduates were weak in writing and leadership.

These are critical deficiencies that need to be addressed, and need to receive the funding priority to make the needed changes in our education and training infrastructure.  Left in it's current state, we'll be in a heck of a mess, increasingly unable to meet the most basic needs of our society.

How Organizational Learning Occurs

I am always on the lookout for resources that help explain how people and organizations learn. 

I've discovered "The Fifth Discipline - the Art and Practice of the Learning Organization" (an earlier book by Peter M Senge) that brings word of "learning organizations," organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together. 

Five disciplines are described as the means of building learning organizations. Case studies are in the book are provided to show how the disciplines have worked in particular companies.

Each of the five disciplines represents a lifelong body of study and practice for individuals and teams in organizations.

1. Personal Mastery
This discipline of aspiration involves formulating a coherent picture of the results people most desire to gain as individuals (their personal vision), alongside a realistic assessment of the current state of their lives today (their current reality). Learning to cultivate the tension between vision and reality (represented in this icon by the rubber band) can expand people’s capacity to make better choices, and to achieve more of the results that they have chosen.

2. Mental Models

This discipline of reflection and inquiry skills is focused around developing awareness of the attitudes and perceptions that influence thought and interaction. By continually reflecting upon, talking about, and reconsidering these internal pictures of the world, people can gain more capability in governing their actions and decisions. The icon here portrays one of the more powerful principles of this discipline, the “ladder of inference” depicting how people leap instantly to counterproductive conclusions and assumptions.

3. Shared Vision

This collective discipline establishes a focus on mutual purpose. People learn to nourish a sense of commitment in a group or organization by developing shared images of the future they seek to create (symbolized by the eye), and the principles and guiding practices by which they hope to get there.

4. Team Learning
This is a discipline of group interaction. Through techniques like dialogue and skillful discussion, teams transform their collective thinking, learning to mobilize their energies and ability greater than the sum of individual members’ talents. The icon symbolizes the natural alignment of a learning-oriented team as the flight of a flock of birds.

5. Systems Thinking

In this discipline, people learn to better understand interdependency and change, and thereby to deal more effectively with the forces that shape the consequences of our actions. Systems thinking is based upon a growing body of theory about the behavior of feedback and complexity-the innate tendencies of a system that lead to growth or stability over time. Tools and techniques such as systems archetypes and various types of learning labs and simulations help people see how to change systems more effectively, and how to act more in tune with the larger processes of the natural and economic world. The circle in this icon represents the fundamental building block of all systems: the circular “feedback loop” underlying all growing and limiting processes in nature.

Senge is also the author of a more recent work, "The Dance of Change" that is also groundbreaking work, that among other things recognizes that the impact of learning culture on organizational performance takes many years to track.

(Many people claim to espouse the Kirkpatrick model, and when I ask HOW they are tracking results of learning, provide me an answer that is really not tracking the results of learning, but rather, the ACTIVITY of providing learning experiences.)

It's important for us who are responsible for development of the workforce to understand how learning models work.  This is as good a source as I've found to date.  Check it out, and let me know what you think...

Ever Wonder Why Women Enter the Field of Engineering?

Julie Martin Trenor, Director of Undergraduate Student Recruitment and Retention at the Cullen College of Engineering, University of Houston is one of the most significant voices advocating the Engineering profession for women. I pay close attention to anything from her that crosses my desk.

She recently cited some excellent research into WHY women are drawn to engineering, that I wanted to share with you.  She cites studies by Goodman & Cunningham in 2002, Seymour & Hewitt, in 1997, Grose in 2006 and the American Society for Engineering Education in 2006 that document the "drivers" of interest in Engineering for women.  These studies provide a good "roadmap" for profiling women who might take to the Engineering field:

• Confidence in math/science abilities
• Engineer role models (90% know an engineer)
• Parental encouragement
• Value potential societal contributions of the field
  • Fields with more obvious altruistic nature boast much higher female enrollment percentages: 
    
    • e.g. biomedical engineering =  42%,
    • environmental engineering = 43%.
  • However, top 6 disciplines with highest % of women comprise only 17% of all B.S. degrees awarded
• The future of our engineering workforce therefore rests on the ability of the field to market itself as a socially-conscious, application-driven, and team-based profession!

The talent shortage will not relent, even in a recessionary cycle, and it is imperative that women continue to ascribe to the engineering profession.  Unfortunately, just as there are incentives, Dr. Trenor also points out that there are still many barriers for women.  Among them she cites:

• Poor math preparation: decisions on which discipline to consider, often start in 7th or 8th grade
• Lack of K-12 engineering courses
  
• Negative messages, gender-biased attitudes exist everywhere
  
• Lack of female role models
• Engineering’s public image problem
  • Few role models available in the public eye.
  • Unlike doctors & lawyers, engineers are rarely portrayed in prime time television
    • Engineers/scientists are often portrayed as white males
    • Women fre3quently relegated to subordinate roles (e.g. lab assistants)
    • Contrast “Dilbert”, “Star Trek” vs. “Law & Order”, “Grey’s Anatomy”
• Peer pressure to go into "popular" programs
• Isolation

There need to be more engineers period, and there are many opportunities for women to excel in this profession.  Watch this blog for more updates on Dr Trenor's important work in this area.

The Future Workforce - Predictions about Global Business and the Workforce

Thomas Friedman announced in his visionary work "The World is Flat" how the globalization of our economies would forever change the way business was done. 

Author, researcher and teacher Floyd Kemske a really smart guy and a voracious writer, provides some great insights into how the global nature of business will influence and shape the "future workforce"

1. The role of corporate HR will change to that of creator of overall values and direction, and will be implemented by local HR departments in different countries.
2. Technology, especially the Internet, will enable more businesses to enter the global marketplace.
3. HR professionals will have advanced acumen in international business practices, international labor laws, multicultural sensitivities and multiple languages.
4. HR professionals will need to be knowledgeable of other cultures, languages and business practices to help their companies find and enter more markets.
5. HR people will have to understand other cultures and help people work with, and transfer among, various cultures.
6. Mega global business alliances will grow in number and scope, requiring great finesse on the part of the HR professional.
7. There will be an explosive growth of companies doing business across borders, and it will be the most significant change for the economy in modern times.
8. Cultural understanding and sensitivity will become much more important for the HR professional of the future, whereas multiple language ability isn't going to become a necessary competency.
9. The continued emergence of a world marketplace will require development of an international workforce.
10. Small teams of HR professionals will focus on providing performance improvement consulting services to a variety of locations around the world.

Who's Going to Be the Cheerleaders for Gen-Y?

Baby Boomer Parents have always been their children's biggest cheerleaders.

Now that Gen-Y (aka Millennials) is coming into the workforce, as managers, we need to be aware of some aspects related to these young adults who have experienced a youth of parental cheerleading and working with a variety of coaches (soccer, dance, math etc.)

Millennials expect and need praise.  They have received it throughout their adolescent years, and expect it.  They will mistake silence on the company's part as disapproval. 

Millennials also expect feedback.  And this means regular feedback.  The "annual performance review" that baby-boomers grew up with won't cut it.  Their preference is real-time feedback, and if they can get it on their PC, or better PDA/cellphone, even better

What is the consequence of not responding to this need?  Probably too early to tell, due to lack of empirical data, but my guess is that lacking feedback, many will head to places / environments where they can get the "nurturing" that have come to expect.

How Core Beliefs Become Learning Behaviors

Ninety-five percent of your behavior reflects patterns and habits mostly acquired when you were very young. Because our educators and caregivers didn’t know any better, most of us grew up with ineffective study habits.  Find out why

read more | digg story

Sleeping on the Job - The Next Employee Benefit?

Throughout time, creative geniuses such as Beethoven, Da Vinci, Dali and Einstein one recurring technique has been napping. Today, powernapping has taken corporate America and Japan by storm.

Today workers are increasingly encouraged to take breaks in their day and have a nap; they are even sent on courses to learn how to do this!

read more | digg story

U.S. Department of Labor Proposes Rules To Align Apprenticeship With The 21st Century Economy

WASHINGTON The U.S. Department of Labor has proposed rules to align the national apprenticeship system with the tools and flexibility needed for the 21st century global economy.

"Apprenticeship is a proven model of training that has been expanded beyond its traditional origins in industries such as construction to high growth industries and sectors," said Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment and Training Emily Stover DeRocco. "We have proposed new regulations to reflect the 21st century global economy and the changes that have occurred in apprenticeship programs over the past 30 years."

The proposed rules would set up a more flexible and user-friendly approach for apprentices and employers, and make updates and changes affecting state apprenticeship agencies and the U.S. Department of Labor. The revisions would expand the ways that individuals can advance through apprenticeships. The types of training would expand from one to the following three approaches:

• Competency-based approach, which requires the apprentice to demonstrate competency in the defined subject areas and does not require any specific hours of On-the-Job Training (OJT) or Related Technical Instruction (RTI).
• Traditional, time-based approach, which requires the apprentice to complete a specific number of OJT and RTI hours.
• Hybrid approach, which requires the apprentice to complete a minimum number of OJT and RTI hours and demonstrate competency in the defined subject areas.

Electronic media would be added to the definition of Related Technical Instruction and, as a result, establish technology-based and distance learning as part of an apprentice's instruction.

The proposed changes provide for interim credential certificates, so that active apprentices can demonstrate their proficiency in particular required skills and competencies to employers. Provisions also feature reciprocity, which would allow programs to cross state lines, so long as the host state's applicable laws are followed. Program performance and accountability standards would be enhanced, while guidance and technical assistance would continue to give apprenticeship programs the best prospects for success.

The Top 100 Tools for Learning

Jane Hart, Head of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies recently published a report in eLearn Magazine entitled The Top 100 Tools for Learning.

She wrote this article after completing a study on the tools people were using to become more effective learners.  Many respondents wanted to know what tools other learning professionals use and which are the most popular.

Many of the respondents to this study are well known names in the e-learning field, including Jay Cross, Clive Shepherd, Clark Quinn, Brent Schlenker, Stephen Downes, Seb Schmoller, James Farmer, Jane Bozarth, Harold Jarche, Karl Kapp, Charles Jennings, and George Siemens.

Other contributors are practitioners working in corporate training or education, so there was a wide range of contributions.

If you're in the business of educating others, this is a "must read"

End of the Japanese Salaryman

The “salaryman”, the paragon of Japan, the white-collar hero who fashioned the world's second-largest economy from the ashes of war is becoming a figure of the past. Read the enormous implications in a country in which the company has been the dominant institution in people's lives and how this shift is altering not just the workforce but Japanese society as well.

read more | digg story

Who are the job seekers who have limited basic skills?

I've discussed in this space how just having the traditional 3 R's (Reading wRiting, and aRithmetic), is no longer adequate for many of todays jobs.  People without skill in reading, oral communication, math, teamwork, problem-solving, research, and basic computer skills, are increasingly finding themselves unable to fill the many jobs that become available.

Some of the individuals who have limited skills include out-of-school youth and adults who are:

• Immigrants.
• Without a high school diploma or equivalent.
• High school graduates.
• Individuals with learning disabilities.
• Prisoners and ex-offenders.

Are they unemployable?  Hardly.  But you must recognize that additional screening and evaluation will be needed to find out where they can be utilized.

These job seekers apply for many kinds of jobs requiring various basic skills. In this group you will find those with both low and high levels of basic skills. Members of this group can be strong in some basic skills but weak in others. Also, they might lack the self-confidence and awareness of educational and career options to take on new challenges.

Unfortunately. a lack of basic skills does impact these individual's employability...

• Better jobs demand particular skills, which continually change.
• Workers must be able to handle personal responsibilities.
• Workers must be able to advocate for themselves.
• At career centers, job seekers must deal with literacy, language, and computer tasks.
• Employers sometimes may discriminate against those lacking basic skills or educational credentials.

Thus, additional effort is needed for recruiters and hiring managers in to determine the degree of fit to contemporary  jobs.  Is it worth it?  If you're looking at positions that are open, and you've come up dry, you might want to look at the "limited skills" group again.  The key is determining their willingness to learn, and capacity to learn.  There may be diamonds in the rough that you've overlooked previously.

The Future Workforce - Predictions about Workplace Flexibility

Author, researcher and teacher Floyd Kemske a really smart guy and a voracious writer, provides some great insights into the "future workforce"

1. Collaborative cultures will be the workplace model.
2. Creative employment contracts will support more time off, flexibility in hours and work location, technological job aids and more pay at risk with significant upside potential.
3. Company intranets will become a major tool for communication, training and benefits administration; HR will play a leading role in developing this important tool.
4. Intelligence through knowledge transfer capability will separate the best employees from the rest.
5. Employees will have more and more choices about work arrangements, allowing them to meet their individual needs.
6. Work hours scheduling will become less important as organizations focus on performance and results.
7. Company facilities will become "virtual" through work-at-home, telecommuting and outsourcing.
8. The workweek will be less structured--employees will still work 40-plus hours, but at varied times and places other than the office.
9. Legislation will lead to greater portability of health, welfare and retirement benefits.
10. Free-lance teams of generic problem solvers will market themselves as alternatives to permanent workers or individual temps.

Unaffordable Housing Makes It Hard To Fill Jobs

It's happening all over the country where affordable housing is dwindling, and the workers needed to sustain the local economy are unable to find inexpensive lodging.

For these communities, you might as well tell workers, keep clear - we're unaffordable places to work in...

Add high fuel costs, and ever increasing costs of living, many communities are finding that the "weak link" in their economies is the shortage of workers, not shortage of consumers.  Unless a fix is found, these communities are in for a rough road ahead.

read more | digg story

What are Hard to Fill Jobs? Not What You Might Expect...

The country is not suffering for astrophysicists and neurosurgeons.

Rather, a majority of the "hardest-to-fill jobs" are done by blue collar workers, according to a survey by Manpower Inc.

The jobs most likely to go wanting are:

1. Sales representative
2. Teacher
3. Mechanic
4. Technician
5. Management/executive
6. Truck driver
7. Driver/delivery
8. Accountant
9. Laborer
10. Machine operator

To compile the results, Manpower surveyed more than 2,400 employers nationwide.

"With the variety of positions employers are struggling to fill, it seems like job seekers should have little trouble finding work," said Jonas Prising, president of Manpower North America, an employment services company. "Yet on a daily basis, we hear from clients who can't find the right people for open positions and candidates who are struggling to get hired. ... The talent crunch is more complex than a shortage of people."

In 2007, 41 percent of employers said that they had difficulty filling jobs, down from 44 percent in 2006. Sales representatives were also the hardest jobs to fill in 2006, though engineers and nurses were then second and third.

Can You Afford The High Co$t of Turnover?

Thanks to the folks over at Chrysalis for this article, which puts the real cost of workforce turnover into a real-world dollars and sense perspective.

Case Study:The High Cost of Workforce Turnover

Les's business generated revenues of $6.6 million in 2003. Profit margins were 14%. His 2004 projected increase in revenues (an eight percent increase) is $528,000.

Last year, Les's company produced sixty-four W- 2's for 35 positions. Essentially they hired 64 new employees for twenty positions; 15 employees were employed more than 12 months.

On the surface, turnover appears to be 83 percent, less than the 92 percent industry average. Churn-over, the number of employees hired and gone in less than one-year, was a whopping 320 percent (64 attempts at hiring for 20 positions)!

At the cost of $6,000 per employee, these 64 employees cost the company $384,000. Even at the same clip this year, churn-over will eat up nearly seventy-two percent of the projected revenue gains.

What's worse - much worse - is how much revenue has to increase to sustain the 14 percent profit margin. At fourteen percent profit margin, nearly $2,743,000 in additional revenues need to be brought in just to keep pace with the lost costs of churn-over.

Increasing revenues shouldn't be Les' primary focus unless he likes to just work harder and harder with not a lot to show for it. If Les and his team would only put a plan in motion to reduce annual hourly turnover to 25%, they would find it much less painful to grow the business at the top line and the bottom line.

The cost of 16 churned employees would be $96,000, a savings of $288,000 in the human resource line item. Re-funneling a portion of the savings for wages, benefits and training back to the remaining employees would certainly be a good idea too as the return on retaining employees is clearly much greater than recruiting new ones.

Of even greater importance will be the increased profit margin from revenue growth. Although the revenues required to foot the bill for even 25 percent turnover is still over $600,000, Les's company will increase profits due to increased productivity and quality from a more experienced workforce, lower administrative and training costs for new hires, and less stress on supervisors, managers and co-workers.

Is Generation X Ready to Take Over from Baby Boomers?

Whereas Baby Boomers were the last generation to go out behind the barn and cut a switch because we mouthed off to our mothers,  Gen-X kids  would quickly remind us that charges will be filed or they'll suffer mental anguish if they are so much as verbally reprimanded. Is the difference in upbringing a factor in their ability to work and lead ?

read more | digg story

A Basic Question - WHY Do You Learn?

I really enjoy being in the area of helping people develop their potential.

But I sometimes wonder what motivates students beyond simple knowledge acquisition toward continuous strengthening of specific skills and abilities known to be vital in the workplace and life. 

Much of what I observe is individuals completing education because it is in their annual "professional development plan" or because it is required for them to have a certain number of "continuing education credits" to maintain a license or certification.

Is that all there is?  I'd like to hear your thoughts on this matter....

To what extent do you (or your organization), utilize continuing education to:

• Bring interests and talents into sharper focus
• Direct you toward your goals, keying into the demands of business and industry
• Help build the confidence, competence and business acumen that lead to a rewarding career

How to Establish a Competency Framework - the Right Way

Many organizations develop a competency/behavior framework with a view to managing performance and progression more effectively. However, many managers and individuals find it hard to use the frameworks to achieve their goals and, therefore, the goals of the organization.

The most common reasons for this are that people don't see the benefit of the framework and aren't trained adequately; there aren't clear links to what the business is aiming to achieve and many frameworks are a mix of different concepts that makes them unwieldy.

A competency framework should be a useful tool to help manage performance. If you already have one, or something similar in your organization, here are some simple steps you can follow to see if it's fit for purpose.

1. Communicate the purpose

The first thing is to find out if employees understand what the purpose is. If they don't understand how behaviors contribute to personal and organizational success, there is little point in updating or developing the framework. Remind people about why it was introduced, for example, to help with culture change, performance management, recruitment or development. Make sure they understand how the framework contributes to these. If people aren't clear about this then you need to find out what their challenges are and explain how the framework can help. If the framework doesn't help meet their challenges, it is not fit for purpose however 'perfectly' constructed it is.

2. Identify Key Themes

Even if staff is clear about the purpose of the framework, it still needs to support the organization’s aspirations (goals, values, business plans and so on). If people aren't all working towards these aspirations, then some individual efforts are likely to be diversions from organizational success. Meet with key stakeholders (the people who have an influence on production or implementation); gather together all the documents that capture the organization’s aspirations and ask them to consider questions such as: 'What would people say about our organization?' 'What needs to change?' and 'What are the challenges that lie ahead?' Key themes are likely to be things such as 'listen to customers' and 'look after staff'. Once you have the themes, check that the behaviors in the framework support them. All themes should be supported by some behaviors, and all behaviors should support some of the themes.

3. Get Conditions Right

The organization’s procedures need to support the framework, and the culture, resourcing and management structures must be supportive too. For example, if you have a silo-type organization or a performance management system that focuses solely on the individual, then people are unlikely to display collaborative teamworking behaviors. Be realistic; if conditions inhibit behaviors then change the conditions or change the behaviors.

4. Tackle the Root Cause

Goals and conditions, behavior are influenced by underpinning characteristics (knowledge, skills and attitude). One underdeveloped characteristic, such as communication skills, can affect many different behaviors. If managers don't understand this distinction they may focus on trying to improve the behavior without tackling the root cause. For example, someone who is not 'planning the whole task to ensure effective implementation' (an example of a behavior) may simply lack knowledge of the task. If managers focus only on the behavior, there may be a frustrated delegate on a planning skills course and a wasted chunk of the training budget.

5. Keep it Simple

There are two key elements to ease of use - language and structure. However 'perfect' the framework, if it's too complicated, long or detailed it won't be used. The language has to be meaningful to the people who use it. This is partly why frameworks bought off the shelf don't work - because the language doesn't fit the culture or the organization. If the framework is too complex to be used effectively, it is possible you have tasks (for example, 'completes work records on time'), aspirations ('valuing diversity') and personal characteristics ('communication skills') mixed in with behaviors. These are valuable influences on performance but if they are mixed in with behavior statements it makes the framework not only unwieldy but also confusing. It is necessary to strip out tasks (they belong in job descriptions), characteristics (these underpin behaviors) and aspirations (at organizational level these are value statements or organizational goals and at an individual level they are personal goals). If you want to highlight the importance of characteristics then keep them in a separate part of the framework from the behaviors.

6. Train, don't Blame

Once you have tidied up the structure make sure that everyone who uses the framework is trained in how to use it. A framework is a tool, and as with any tool, if users don't know how to use it, it will fall into disuse or fail to meet its full potential.

As stated at the outset, the purpose of a competency framework is to be a useful tool to help manage performance. If you discover that your framework is not fit for purpose this is probably not the fault of the tool, but the way it was constructed, the conditions in which it is used or the abilities of those who use it. Improve these factors and you will have a powerful tool to improve the performance of your organization.

Prepare for the War for Talent 2.0

It’s become apparent to that the long dormant War for Talent has emerged from its hibernation.

What makes this War For Talent 2.0 particularly dramatic is the convergence of two factors.

1. First, the baby boom generation is retiring in increasingly larger numbers. The impact of this wave of retirements is already being felt by many corporations.
2. Secondly, companies are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their recruitment practices. Virtually all the Fortune 500 now have highly developed staffing machines that are relentlessly focused on identifying and attracting top talent.

What this means is that the War for Talent has shifted its focus from Recruitment to Retention. The most forward-thinking corporations are now placing an increased emphasis on reducing turnover and addressing early career development issues.

All this underscores the importance of On-boarding. Research confirms that programs that address the key factors that influence retention and time to productivity, are reaping the greatest rewards.

That’s the reason firms are encouraged to analyze their effectiveness in these important areas. Often this analysis yields ideas that can directly translate into your company winning the new War for Talent.

They Still Don't Get It...

A recent article I found on the Columbia News Service proves that the construction industry still doesn't get the idea that women NEED to be an increasing part of the skilled construction workforce.

A well written article, entitled "Hard-hatted women struggle to land construction jobs"  produced by Julia Marsh, chronicles the current-day struggles that women fact in this male-dominated industry.  Read on, I think you'll be amazed at what a long way the industry still needs to go - and how the worker shortage in construction will continue until enlightened leadership steps forward.

Carole Jordan’s first day at work was a frigid January morning in 2003. She rose early and arrived at the job site by 6:30 a.m. After eight hours of standing on concrete, carrying sheetrock up and down stairs, Jordan left the skeleton of the skyscraper she was helping to build, arrived home by 5 p.m. and collapsed in bed by 6.

"After the first two weeks I thought I was dying. Muscles I didn’t even know I had were aching," said Jordan, a native New Yorker who is in her late 40s.

A little more than three years later, the elements haven’t proved to be the hardest part of Jordan’s career as a construction worker.

"It’s a man’s world," she said. "You work hard, come to the job every day and you’re often not given a shot" at a promotion.

Jordan is among a small but budding number of women entering what is officially called nontraditional employment--a range of jobs that includes fishing and firefighting, the toughest of which to break into is the construction industry. About 900,000 women across the United States work in some form of construction, be it brick masonry or drywall installation, a rise of 18 percent over the last eight years, according to the National Association for Women in Construction.

Though the Equal Employment Opportunity Act was passed in the early 1970s, women account for only 9 percent of construction workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which recently published a survey showing that 88 percent of those women had experienced sexual harassment on the job.

Jordan sat at a table with two other women, Olga Aguilar, 29, and Donna Kielbasa, 28, at the New York headquarters of a job-training nonprofit group called Nontraditional Employment for Women, known as NEW. The three came through NEW’s construction school, a six-week program in which they learned to read blueprints and handle skill saws. Seventy percent of graduates are placed in jobs averaging $53,000 a year in the construction, transportation and utilities industries.

The NEW model of supporting women in blue-collar trades is also used by sister organizations like Tradeswomen Inc. in California and the North Carolina group Charm and Hammer.

All three women had some history in construction. Aguilar’s father renovated homes. Jordan’s childhood mentor was a woodworker. Kielbasa built tree houses.

"I always liked to work with my hands and wear my jeans," Aguilar said, slapping her paint-speckled pants. "The better angle is that I make $16 an hour."

The lure for many women, said NEW's director, Anne Rascon, is a desire for economic independence. Rascon, who worked in a gold mine in California to pay for college, added, "Our experience has been that the women spend their 20s cycling through dead-end, low-wage jobs, and then a light goes on and they see us as an alternative."

Women entering the trades are ethnically diverse, typically about 31 years old and single heads of households, according to statistics from advocacy groups.

Participants of Hard Hatted Women, Cleveland’s version of NEW, which also began in the late 1970s, have an average income of $15,000 before entering the training program. The pay they receive in their first jobs is $11.50 an hour, which with overtime and union benefits comes to an annual salary of just under $30,000.

"It’s a different kind of lifestyle," Rascon said. "You have to like getting up early, working in the hot and cold weather."

Though the women have to be prepared for physical work, technology is such today that workers no longer have to rely solely on brute strength.

The women also often have to go it alone. Though the current job the NEW graduates are working on, a building for City University of New York, has a relatively high 7-to-45 ratio of women to men, in many cases there may be only one woman on a site.

"The women have it real rough," said Kevin Simmons, shop steward for the CUNY site. "I tip my hat to the ones that last."

Although the construction industry has experienced a labor shortage in recent years, one of the greatest challenges to bringing in women is simple recruitment.

"A lot of women don’t think about it," said Nancy Gentile, former chairwoman of the Committee of Women in the Trades, a division of the AFL-CIO. "They’re raised on Barbie dolls, not tools."

Though trade unions are mandated to train a certain percentage of women in construction, for Aguilar and Jordan the unions still have an old boys club feeling.

"Have you been in a union hall?" Aguilar asked. "It’s all white Irish men sitting in the directors' chairs."

Jordan switched out of a floor-covering apprenticeship, when, she said, she was twice overlooked by her construction teacher and then by a union director to fill job openings.

Kielbasa and Jordan said the harassment they had encountered included lurid sexual drawings at the site and come-ons by coworkers. Sometimes the discrimination is less overt or emerges as a lack of awareness about women’s needs in a male-dominated environment.

The three women said that at their most recent job, the one portable toilet for seven women was being used regularly by men. Also, without any running water to wash their hands, the women found it unsanitary to switch from fitting insulation to using the facilities during menstruation.

"Sometimes I feel like a stepchild [and] I don’t want to be too much of a problem," Aguilar said. "But are we a problem now that we need a place to wash our hands when we have a ‘woman’s issue?’"

But as Beth Young, director of Tradeswomen Inc., points out, it’s less of an anomaly to see a woman with a tool belt slung on her hip than it was 20 years ago when she worked as a crane operator.

"When I started I was told straight up, women don’t belong here," Young said. "[People thought] I either wanted to be a man or I wanted to get a man. I just wanted to get a paycheck like anyone else."

Ladies - The Design and Construction Industry Wants YOU!

AEC is becoming more diverse by the day.  This is evidenced by several publications dedicated to promoting women and minorities in the trades and engineering.  Here are two books “Cool Careers for Girls in Construction” and “Cool Careers for Girls in Engineering.”

If you're interested in seeing the life experiences of women in various AEC professions, you'll find these books informative and motivated.  Check them out!

Is Sustainability a Buzz Word or Call to Action?

Christine M. Fiori, PhD, PE director of professional and academic outreach at Myers-Lawson School of Construction at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, writes for ENR and several other industry publications.

A recent article on her blog asks a relevant question:
Sustainability – Buzz Word or Call to Action?

You hear it everywhere - Sustainability, going green, greenage, LEED, Eco Friendly, Eco developed, Green this and Green that.....pick your title.

But is the industry committed to Sustainable design and development, or just paying lip service as a way to snag "green projects", or put another way, going through the motions, without changing your "party" affiliation?

There is another issue that like it or not, must be addressed.  Being really "green" is more than changing your focus, it's changing your attitude, and that means rethinking how the organization thinks - for "green" requires a unprecedented level of collaboration, dialog, negotiation that goes far beyond what is involved in the "narrower" context of the AEC community.

Further, as Dr. Fiori points out, it requires a transformation of the way AEC professionals are educated.  Raising the question - when does the transformation of thinking need to begin?  Is college early enough, or should the molding of minds into a "green" attitude need to start earlier (K-12)?

How the digital workspace will revolutionize learning

January's Learning Technologies 2008 conference discussed how the digital workspace has become the primary place for learning, and the challenge it presents to learning and development professionals, and how the old standard of "tell  em what they need to know" is becoming passe'

Want to discover how the wigital workspace has changed things?
read more | digg story