Tag Archives: Workforce

Develop Your Career Agility

Posted on by Bill Ryan

We often hear about the virtue of agility as both a requirement to achieve business success and as a needed worker trait when navigating a career during a time of flux. Knowing how to advantageously manage change is considered smart and profitable. Many however, may wonder how exactly agility is to be practiced. Is it just a matter of adopting a new mindset or are there specific actions that need to be taken? What follows are my thoughts on agility in the context of career development for the individual worker.

Yes, mentally shifting away from habitual rigidity and unchallenged assumptions is a good place to start. It can help to adopt a heuristic such as the SMART goals model to guide and gauge your agility practice. To review, SMART is an acronym for change actions that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. Bringing order and a degree of simplification to the decision-making process will improve your ability to adapt.

Beyond these beginning measures it is advisable to be aware of market, industry, and professional trends which will impact your career. These trends will be relatively temporal, so tuning in regularly to the twists and turns of work-related currents is an approach best integrated into your professional practice. To illustrate, let us examine some general contemporary proclivities in the 2024 world of work worthy of consideration when career planning.

The old career rules or conventions are changing. It has been old news for a while that rarely do workers spend their entire careers with a single employer anymore like the Boomers did. But the change does not stop there. The combination of advanced communications and analytic technology combined with a shifting ethic regarding work/life balance has disrupted the traditional relationship between employer and employee. In short, valued talent has a leg up on demanding concessions from employers yearning to keep them in-house for as long as possible.

For example, management has been getting the message that the cost burden placed on employees to work is increasingly being viewed as unacceptable. Traditionally, it has always been the responsibility of workers to absorb certain costs to remain employed, such as commuting, child care, and housing expenses. One of the consequences of the pandemic has been for workers to realize that these costs are a liability not sufficiently covered by the compensation they receive. A corresponding recognition is that productivity for many positions does not diminish when work is performed remotely.

With return to work mandates seen increasingly as an expensive and unnecessary encumbrance on employees, management is beginning to offer cost offsets such as housing subsidies, caregiver benefits, student loan assistance, and even financial literacy programs. The hope is that such initiatives will retain high quality employees.

Some employers are also becoming more agreeable to flex time arrangements. Taking extended work breaks for family reasons, delaying retirement, returning from retirement, working part time temporarily, job sharing, and other individualized deals are becoming more common. In general, management sees the need to make it simpler and more desirable for talent to stay or return from leaves.

Another trend which we have heard a lot about over the past year and a half is the onset of Artificial Intelligence and how it will both improve and devastate our jobs. AI will undoubtedly change the employment landscape in ways that practically scream for workers to be agile. I think it is safe to say that job refashioning will be a multi-year trend that is underway as we speak due to AI. One consultant who is an expert on future of work issues predicts that AI will intervene in up to 70% of text and data-laden jobs by 2025, which is up from under 10% in 2023.

Anticipating and preparing for AI’s influence in your profession would seem to be the understatement of the year. As companies and individual contributors figure our how to best leverage AI’s potential while mitigating its downsides, all of us need to find that career sweet spot between over-hyping AI’s consequences and ignoring its likely effects.

Hopefully, this gives you some practical ideas to contemplate when making career plans for an unpredictable future. Workforce disruption is likely to be significant in the near term. Exercising agility is a key component of what should be your preparedness regimen.

 

Workplace Culture Caution

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Workplace culture unfolds to be what it is due to interactions of several influences. Included among these affects are how leadership and managerial styles project specific decision-making approaches, the modes of communication present, and guidance behaviors displayed by management and mentors. In addition, organizations may attempt to adhere to mission statements or other codified value declarations to drive operations, policies, and procedures. Workspace design can also matter when assessing the safety, comfort, and efficiency of the workplace. Further, diversity and inclusion, learning and development, and work-life balance initiatives can make a difference in employee attitudes.

All of these factors are important, but I will argue that the quality of employee engagement internally within their workplace and especially among each other’s colleagues is chief among the impacts shaping workplace culture.

Workers in an organization or business typically make up the bulk of bodies at the workplace. For any establishment to be successful several conditions must be evident among the members of this cohort. We know that the type of work being performed must feel meaningful and purposeful; that there are prospects for career growth or advancement; that positive and productive behaviors are recognized and reinforced; that employees feel a significant degree of empowerment and autonomy to make their own decisions; and that workers feel transparency and fairness is always evident in how decisions are made and performance evaluated.

The collective psychology of employees plays a crucial role in whether organizational prosperity is achieved or not. But workers should not expect managers to be the sole kingpins of whether their progress is favorable or not. Sure, poor leadership can sink the ship. However, workers themselves are also critical to workplace positivity, or lack thereof.

Poor or even dysfunctional workplace culture results from a series of mishaps and inadequate calculations caused by management or workers or a combination of the two. But it is the workers I want to stay focused on at this time. In particular, I want to address the phenomenon of a workplace culture that is misguided psychologically with the cause originating from the employees themselves.

I will use an example from my own professional past to help make my point. I worked for many years in an environment that praised egalitarianism. Equity was baked into system. We bargained for contracts collectively. There was no compensation differential between men and women. Unionism was strong. To be clear, I think these are all great traits and would not trade any of them away. But this equity-based culture produced an unintended liability that to my knowledge has never been resolved.

Workers largely prided themselves on staying in their own work lane — working collaboratively at times, but mostly performing a solo function that required a lot of stamina. We were all pulling oars, which meant we needed to work mechanistically. To have someone stray off course because they wanted to be too creative, or too much of a leader, or too, well, different in the way that they wanted to handle their job, then the mainstream raised their shackles. Questions of, ‘Who-do-they-think-they-are?’ and ‘Looks-to-me-like-they’re-trying-to-suck-up-to-management?’ began to get buzzed about.

Homogeneity was culturally rewarded. Divergence and distinction were not. Inbred psychological unsafety and insecurity had too much of a hold on the group. There are many other scenarios that embody cultural breakdown. The journey to worker psychological unsafety can come a number of different ways.

So, once a consensus of stakeholders recognize there is a problem, how then best to remedy it? One suggestion is for the workforce to consider adoption of an agile mindset. Let me explain. About twenty years ago a group of software development engineers instituted an Agile Manifesto, which they believed would strengthen an organization’s ability to produce. Agility was their reaction against an overly bureaucratic and rigid process which they claimed slowed production and innovation. Being agile meant introducing flexibility and adaptability to the process, leading to greater invention and dynamism.

The agile movement has since found applications in many other areas of operations, including HR, sales, customer service, project management, employee management, and elsewhere. The changed frame of mind an agile approach ushers in has demonstrated value and it can as well in employee-to-employee relations.

Among the benefits an agile process brings is to address how to handle internal conflicts within the group so that each group member can function efficiently and securely. What is encouraged is open communication, give and take, question and answer, working the problem, and acting and reacting with respect for each participant and the process. What is discouraged is staying rooted in unchanging and low-production practices and in censoring one another. The anticipated outcome is a shift to a workplace of high psychological safety and greater production.

The scaffolding necessary to transition to a cultural change of this magnitude is beyond the scope of this essay. However, for many workplaces it can happen and needs to happen. A workplace saturated in creativity, managed risk, and mutual regard beats a workplace steeped in fear and survival any day of the week.

 

Meta Cities: Repurposing Where We Live and Work

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Harvard Business Review recently released a 2023 talent management piece by Richard Florida from the University of Toronto and Vladislav Boutenko, Antoine Vetrano, and Sara Saloo, all with Boston Consulting Group, entitled The Rise of the Meta City. Their thesis reveals an emerging development in the evolving work-from-home (WFH) paradigm that is novel and worth considering as we envision the future of both our careers and where to become a resident.

It is no secret that mobility-enhancing technologies combined with the face to face limitations wrought by the Pandemic resulted in a rapid expansion of remote work. From approximately 6% of the American workforce working remotely in 2019 to 18% by 2021 shows how briskly the phenomenon swelled. A recent BCG survey from August 2023 indicates that only 7% of companies require full time return to work whereas 8% of companies have discarded offices completely. This means the vast majority of business are operating with some form of hybrid working.

A consequence of the proliferation of WFH employment is that many more digitally-centric employees are choosing to live outside of the traditional commute radius from their employers’ offices. With customary commutes being curtailed, workers are incentivized to look at residential options in areas that are more affordable and which feature a higher quality of life. For example, a LinkedIn study identified small to mid-sized cities receiving WFH transplants such as Springfield, MA, Tallahassee, FL, Portland, OR, College Station, TX, and Wenatchee, WA. Some locations actually offer cash incentives for WFH employees to move there like Tulsa, OK and Perry County, IN.

This realignment of workers from office to home and from employer-based cities to increasingly distant residential locations is starting to reveal patterns. A significant new template emerging is the rise of what Florida et al call the “Meta City”. Initially, it is helpful to think of meta cities as not entirely fixed geographically. The old inner city to suburb to exurb to rural model is not applicable here. Rather, the dimensions of the meta city extend from a major economic hub city to a host of far flung smaller cities in other parts of the country or globe. Modern telecommunications technology and talent flows allow for cities which may be geographically separate to operate as distinct units economically.

Some examples are called for to better visualize this spectacle. New York City is a top-dog economic hub in a number of industries, but most importantly in the finance sector. Financial talent flows into and out of NYC most measurably with other American cities like Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Atlanta, among others. This hub and satellite configuration comprises a finance meta city. London, too, is major finance hub with Manchester, Birmingham, Dublin, Edinburgh, and Cambridge serving as financial talent satellites. San Francisco is a principal technology hub city connected to smaller, but also tech heavy cities like Austin, Seattle, Boston, and San Diego.

The concept of talent flow is crucial to an understanding of the growth of meta cities. The flow of talented employees refers to physical mobility of people among the cities of the meta unit and also to remote contributions made by talent within the unit. To illustrate, Emily retains employment with Company A in New York, but chooses to live and work from Miami because of the high cost of living in New York and its long winters. Jason also works at Company A in New York where he intentionally lives because he loves the vibrancy of the city, and from there collaborates with Emily on a daily basis as part of a development team.

Although Florida et al do not refer to rural living, presumably the meta cities are speckled with geographically dispersed talent who “work” inside of meta cities, but live in a variety of non-urban locations.

Meta cities are an interesting outgrowth of the remote working trend, a glimpse into how the new generations choose to live and work, and also how the economy of the twenty-first century is coming into its own.

 

Strengths and Weaknesses Revisited

Posted on by Bill Ryan

As I write this piece the calendar is about to flip to the year 2024. Therefore, my thinking is that this is a good time for careerists to revisit the perennial topic of how to communicate one’s strengths and weaknesses in the context of their professionalism.

How one self-perceives their strengths and weaknesses factors significantly into the impressions left upon others whose opinions of you may matter in how well you achieve success on the job. Typically, we think of the strengths and weaknesses question as one that comes up in job interviews and to be sure it still does. More on that later. But there are other instances during which an authentic and well delivered message about your capacities and limitations is pertinent.

Supervisors, colleagues, customers, and other stakeholders want to know what they can reliably expect from you and in what areas they should adjust their assumptions about you. We are called upon on a daily basis to promote ourselves on the job. How we perform is always being assessed by someone. The more consistently we are able to capitalize on our strengths and manage our weaknesses the more likely we can control the construction of our professional reputation and benefit our careers.

The narrative we deploy to reinforce our daily demonstrations of strengths and weaknesses builds both our prospects among those who entrust in us and our professional credibility. Getting these statements right matters.

It is during job interviews when a well formed response to the questions of what are your strengths and weaknesses is traditionally most anticipated. So, let’s take a look at how best to craft your reply in an interview situation.

First to strengths: As counterintuitive as it may seem, take the focus of your strength proclamations away from you as a person and instead direct them toward the needs of your employer, customers, and any other concerned parties who desire your expertise. Your goal is to solve people’s problems not pump up your ego.

How do you discover what the needs are of an organization to which you are applying? Study the job description. The specifics you require to align your skills with their demands should be right there. Executive communications specialist Joel Schwartzberg suggests that you convey each strength in four parts:

  • A label for your strength
  • A factual example of that strength being applied
  • The result of that application
  • How much you are energized by utilizing that strength

Now to weaknesses: Again, referencing Schwartzberg, he proposes to reframe the negative term “weaknesses” into “challenges”. This alternative name redefines what might be thought of as an innate characteristic flaw into a difficulty which can be remedied through purposeful interventions such as training or dedicated practice.

When selecting weaknesses/challenges to disclose to the interviewers be careful to not pinpoint a job requirement which is fundamental to the position. If you see yourself drawn to such a job essential as a challenge example, then rethink whether or not you should be applying for this position. Once you have settled on two or three challenges, present each one in three parts:

  • A label for your challenge
  • Relatively low-level effects that might result from the challenge
  • How committed you are to improve

Keep in mind that the interviewers, and by extension your colleagues, managers, and customers, are most interested in whether you can meaningfully collaborate to augment the operation. If you can use the strengths and weaknesses questions to drive home an understanding about your areas of expertise, leave the impression that you are earnest about professional growth, and communicate that you are candid and forthcoming about what motivates you, then you will have done your career a big favor.

You do not need to be thought of as perfect. Rather, you want to be deemed as dependable and trustworthy.

 

 

Career Passion and Wellbeing

Posted on by Bill Ryan

It is a conventional understanding, sometimes expressed explicitly but often simply assumed, that if we are to work for a living, then our efforts yield richer rewards if we have a genuine passion for our career choice. Passion, we are told, is the greatest motivator. It is what compels us to willingly throw ourselves into our work and to perform at our finest with no external stimuli needed.

“Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”, is the way the maxim goes. What could be better than to feel such fervor for your career?

It is easy to see how management would be delighted to have workers who are “naturals” at fulfilling functions necessary for the prosperous advancement of a business or organization. Such employees will require few if any performance incentives. They are self-motivated players who embrace being subject matter experts. In their hands, productivity should reign without the problems associated with someone displaying less ardor for their work.

Workers who view their careers as vocations rather than as jobs are a precious resource for any enterprise. Managers who realize this will do what they can to facilitate conditions designed to enhance employee wellbeing and sustain the valuable assets they have. Conversely, managers who see very dedicated employees as a never ending supply of production and who develop an attitude that these workers will always go the extra mile, because to go above and beyond is inherent in them, could very well find they have squandered an advantage.

Even for those for whom their work is their calling, respect and care must be regularly demonstrated by management if this talent is going to remain committed to the organization and to do their best work. The results of a research study on the topic of wellbeing released by Gallup, Inc. in July 2023 reveal pertinent findings that leaders should know if they are serious about holding onto their best and brightest.

To start, Gallup finds that only one in four workers think their employers are concerned about their wellbeing. This is true in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and France. The abysmally low number is historic as well. Except for a brief period at the beginning of the pandemic, when many workers thought management cared about their health and welfare, this only ~25% who feel cared for has been the norm.

It is simply good business for management to genuinely support their best workers. To quote from the authors of the Gallup research, employees who believe management is dedicated to their wellbeing are:

  • Three times more likely to be engaged at work
  • 69% less likely to actively search for a new job
  • 71% less likely to report experiencing a lot of burnout
  • Five times more likely to strongly advocate for their company as a place to work
  • Five times more likely to strongly agree that they trust the leadership of their organization
  • 36% more likely to be thriving in their overall lives

These powerful statistics strongly suggest that structuring a workplace so that all employees, and in particular the most valuable talent, are emotionally and substantively gratified goes well beyond just being a nice thing to do, but actively works toward fulfillment of an organization’s mission.

Wellbeing in general involves not just career, but other social, financial, and health related factors. And of course, it is ultimately up to each individual to shape their lives so they are living optimally. However, given the amount of time and energy careers require, this is an area of life demanding special attention. Wellbeing should be a fundamental organizational issue as well as a personal responsibility.

Even the best employees deserve to know they are truly valued. To operate as if it is totally up to each person to independently feel fulfilled by others while on the job, leaves the workplace vulnerable to low productivity and weak competitiveness.

The Data Dilemma

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Data-driven decision making has been the rage in business for some time now. The collection of data based on what are determined to be key performance indicators specific to a business is used to justify the outcome of higher quality organizational decision making, which in turn drives the formation and execution of business strategy.

Data aggregation can be crucial with tasks as basic as answering difficult questions to more sophisticated functions such as developing and testing hypotheses and formulating theories. Further benefits of having vital information available include risk evaluation, resource allocation, program and policy assessment, and performance measurement. The use of data is seen as a more efficient means of implementing these activities than would be the case in relying on intuition, hunches, and observation alone.

It is hard to argue against the utilization of data in running a business. McKinsey reports that data-driven organizations are twenty-three times more likely to attract customers, six times more likely to retain those customers, and nineteen times more likely to be profitable.

It is not difficult to find examples of how data-driven decision making has led to business success. Anmol Sachdeva, an independent marketing consultant, has researched several. For instance, Red Roof Inn positions their hotels near airports. They figured out how flight cancellation data and weather reports could be combined to increase their bookings. Netflix compiles user data concerning watch time, location, and programming preferences to predict which shows will become big hits. Coca-Cola leverages social media data to determine who mentions or posts pictures of their products. With this data, personalized and targeted advertising has led to a four-time increase in clickthrough rates.

In short, data collection has become the proverbial game-changer for business. By helping organizations pinpoint the factors that better address challenges and boost productivity and profits, data and its astute analysis, is now an essential component of business success.

However, despite the advantages of focused data there can come a point in which the zeal to collect information can become extreme and intrusive, particularly for employees. Of course, it is reasonable to expect that management would want data to make improvements in productivity among their workforce. Performance metrics can be used to spot shortcomings, training needs, and specifics for employee performance evaluations. An organization that leans toward a results-only performance model for their employees need objective data more than a manager’s potentially skewed or biased interpretation of how employees discharge their duties.

Quantification can be misused if it is used to go beyond the reasons stated above. There are now too many documented instances of employees being excessively monitored such that the workplace has become a surveillance culture. A career cannot thrive in a context where someone is always looking over your shoulder. Questionable monitoring may be the result of management wanting to identify organizing threats such as unionization communications. Or maybe the surveillance is used to spot ways of automating tasks so as to reduce the workforce. In extreme cases, data may be applied to limit wage growth, exploit labor, or even discriminate.

Amazon may be the poster child for such data fanaticism. Brishen Rogers, an associate professor at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, notes how in 2020 Amazon sought to hire two “intelligence analysts” who were to use data analytics and other means to find “labor organizing threats” from among the Amazon workforce. The company goes on to insist their outsourced delivery providers hand over geo-locations, speed, and movement of drivers to use however the company wants. Inordinate corporate surveillance has also been chronicled at Uber, Lyft, Tesla, and Apple.

Inappropriate use of data results in loss of privacy, greater stress. and increased pressure on workers. The workplace can become a place of distrust and fear, not an environment conducive to innovation, high morale, and career enhancement. Instead, let’s insist that data collection be ethically construed, transparent, and legally justifiable.

 

The Need for Versatile Leaders

Posted on by Bill Ryan

There is no shortage of disruptions to our workplaces and to our careers. They come in two styles, one transient and the other sustained. There are the short-lived perturbations, for example our current experiences with inflation, Covid, the war in Ukraine, and spotty supply chain shortages. Then there are the disturbances which have roots in recent history and continually transform, such as the evolutions of globalization and technology, including the advent of generative AI. Taken as a whole, it can seem as if there is little time for complacency or work that is of slow tempo. 

Managers seem especially exposed to the fluctuations and inconsistencies of the modern workplace. They are called upon to guide direct reports through turbulence and insecurity while attempting to follow strategic policies. This can be quite challenging. The way leaders handle threats and turmoil matters for the health of their careers and of the careers of workers who are impacted by managers’ approach to volatility. 

Versatile leaders have been identified as valuable resources for a workplace to have during times of upheaval. They can be beneficial when the need arises to manage resources efficiently to remain productive. Maintaining employee engagement and adaptability during periods of uncertainty requires a special kind of leader. Organizations are increasingly aware of how important it is to have versatile leaders. 

Rob Kaiser of Kaiser Leadership Solutions and Ryne Sherman and Robert Hogan, both of Hogan Assessment Solutions, have been studying versatility in leadership for twenty-six years. They note how from the late nineties to the mid-2000s co-worker ratings of leadership identified the trait of versatility as an important leadership trait 35% of the time. By the time of the Great Recession in 2008, versatility was seen as a significant leadership attribute in 50% of the ratings. And by the time of the pandemic, it shot to 63%. The demand for versatile leadership is growing in recognition. Given the rate of change expanding as it is, it is easy to see why. 

Kaiser et al define versatility as the leadership ability to function effectively in a context characterized as volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Within that setting, versatile leaders can quickly adapt by applying a range of appropriate skills and behaviors that reshuffle and redeploy resources to preserve productivity. This type of leadership manifests in two distinct ways. One style is more forceful and direct as in a single point of command tasked with making the hard choices. The other approach reaches out to employees in an empowering and supportive way to provide tranquility and to ease concerns. The skilled practitioner of versatility knows how to shift between these modes as the situations dictate. 

In fact, a leader who may be well versed and experienced in one of these modes, but unable to adroitly shift to the other does not qualify as a versatile leader and indeed may be a lower quality leader overall due to their situational limitations. However, the good news is that versatility can be an acquired capability. Counterintuitively, versatile leaders are not correlated with any specific personality type. To the contrary, versatile leaders are represented across multiple personality types. Given that the research of Kaiser et al identifies fewer than 10% of the leadership workforce as versatile, the incentive is there for increased versatility training. 

Although personality alone may not be a strong predictor of versatility other background elements are. It has been documented that leaders who have had many kinds of work experiences requiring the development of a diverse range of skills in circumstances for which they were not already highly qualified can be de facto versatility training. The more a leader finds herself or himself faced with assignments that are a stretch, combined with an innate attitude that sees these duties as learning opportunities, then versatility is enhanced. Potential leaders who want to be relevant in today’s world should take note. 

We Are More Than Checklists

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Back in 2009 a well received book was published called The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, a surgeon, author, and public health researcher. The book promotes the use of developing and utilizing checklists to enhance the quality of outcomes resulting from the execution of complex procedures. Dr. Gawande cites many examples of how the deliberate use of checklists leads to greater efficiencies, more uniform discharge of protocols, and improved protections, particularly regarding procedures in which safety is a concern.

Upon examination, causes of unintended consequences and accidents can often be attributed to missed steps in a process, which had they been followed would have mitigated or prevented the mishap. Sure, we all make mistakes. But if we take the time to analyze why a mistake was made, we often find it was because of things like hurrying too much, lacking focus, being distracted, or not having enough experience. These flaws almost always mean measures that should have been taken were not taken.

So, to deploy and to use complete checklists consistently makes perfect sense. In fact, the application of step by step lists is considered so best-practice these days that many of our careers can be seen as little more than a requirement to effectively execute a series of predetermined sequential actions. Take a look at almost any job description. It is little more than a laundry list of expected deliverables like a set of boxes to be checked. It could be said that much of our work is therefore formulaic.

To the extent that we reduce our careers to predicable, stringent, and rote to-do rosters, the more accommodating we make our careers for AI replication. Author Ian Leslie makes an interesting observation in a recent Substack piece. Responding to the fear many express about the growth of AI he points out how we assist the machines to adapt to our ways of doing things because we are adapting our work lives to the ways AI works. When human agency is overly systematized we give our replacement instructions to AI which may be better at checking boxes than we humans are.

When we model our work behavior to a simple inventory we should not be surprised when AI mimics it. AI is algorithmic. It uses models and arrangements of variables in a mechanized and calculated way. As we are finding out, AI can out-perform us over a growing number of jobs, especially the jobs that are like checklists. A pertinent quote by artist Robert Irwin in the Ian Leslie piece is, “Human beings living in and through structures become structures living in and through human beings.”

As we determined above, checklists certainly have their place. However, as people we need to look at our work lives as being beyond just an amalgamation of discreet work tasks and responsibilities. To be human, especially in our careers, must be more than that.

Our evolution requires innovation and novelty. It demands an expression of humanity which is an added value above any pre-arranged framework. It seeks to celebrate intuition and ingenuity and even uncertainty. The careers of tomorrow will thrive because they bring a richness of the human experience not easily cloned by a computation.

Romanticism arose in Europe toward the end of the eighteenth century in reaction to the heavy emphasis being culturally placed on rationalism, science, and industrialization. Instead Romanticism insisted on honoring art, music, literature, nature, and the intellectual capacity of the individual. It exulted human emotion and aesthetic experience. Above all, the message of Romanticism was that to be fully human required embracing the wide range of human expression and to not be limited to the mechanized worldview of materialists and rationalists.

The time may be ripe for a neo-Romanticism in the age of AI and checklists. Efficiencies have their place. But let’s not confuse them with being human.

 

 

American Business Needs Good Teachers

Posted on by Bill Ryan

A disturbing trend could befall the quality of job candidates available for business hiring in the not too far distant future. We are at risk of finding that the pool of potential hires may be deficient in language and mathematical processing skills and in their ability to think critically relative to past generations. Why might this be so? Simply put, the United States is now experiencing a shortage of highly qualified teachers. And there is no end in sight of this problem. 

A weakening of the teaching profession consequently leads to more students receiving less instruction and lower quality education. It is hard to imagine how a nation that is unable to educate its children adequately can expect to succeed commercially, especially in a globalized economy. Yet, this is the situation the U.S. is now facing. 

Tuan Nguyen, Chanh Lam, of Kansas State University and Pula Bruno of the University of Illinois in an August 2022 paper entitled Is There a National Teacher Shortage? revealed there are 36,000 vacant teacher openings and 163,000 teaching positions being occupied by underqualified instructors. They contend these are conservative estimates. 

Josh Bleiberg, an education professor at the University of Pittsburgh, claims the quantity of qualified teachers is falling nationwide and the few states seeing an increase in certified teachers are still not able to keep up with growing enrollments. 

One does not have to look too deeply to see why this is the case. Professor Bleiberg’s research discloses that teacher wages, when adjusted for inflation, have been mostly stagnant from 2000-2020, while student caseloads have been consistent. 

Also, during this time teachers and administrators have witnessed an expansion of accountability initiatives designed allegedly to improve teacher proficiency. Although some accountability measures are necessary, too many have been based on student test scores, leading to needless stress, system gaming, and dilution of curriculum. Making maintenance of teacher credentialing more rigorous with no corresponding compensation increase is bad business. 

The National Center for Education Statistics reports that students earning bachelor’s degrees in education has gone from 176,307 in 1970-71 to 104,008 in 2010-11 to 85,058 in 2019-20. And this decline is before the pandemic. 

We cannot underestimate how negative Covid has been for the teaching profession. The terms and conditions of teacher employment degraded overnight. Concerns about their own health and safety while trying to manage instruction remotely or in super-spreader classroom environments while also dealing with students who had experienced the loss of family members has been extremely detrimental. Many older and more experienced teachers chose early retirement rather than risk their physical and emotional health. 

Moreover, we now have the politicization of education and use of teachers as punching bags by those who claim students are being brainwashed with various culture war issues of a racial or sexual nature. Let’s throw in the risk of school shootings and we can see why a national problem exists. Given the relatively low pay, high productivity demand, health and safety risks, and politically oriented pressure it is no wonder many otherwise great teachers are saying, No Thanks! 

This is not just a problem for one industry. It is a potential loss for our economy if we have ill-prepared students growing up to become our available workforce. It is in the best interests of business to recognize the looming threat and to get on board attempting remediation. 

As a nation, we can start by accepting the value teachers provide and offering them the prestige they deserve. Teachers are much more of a resource than they are an expense. It is past time to honor them for being the assets they are. From there we can tackle issues of adequate compensation, reasonable employment conditions, and greater self-determination. 

It is for the greater good of our economy, our country, and our children that we get this right. 

Facing Incivility on the Job

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Many have noticed an unpleasant change in recent years when doing our jobs, especially for those who perform customer-facing work. This deterioration comes in the form of an increase in incivility among the general public. Discourtesy, rudeness, and disrespect directed at frontline service providers by customers, clients, patients, student parents, airline passengers, and many other service recipients have made working to assist and benefit the public unnecessarily difficult and disheartening. 

This observation is not just anecdotal. Christine Porath is an author, consultant, and management professor at Georgetown University specializing in optimal workplace conditions. Earlier this year Dr. Porath surveyed 2,000 workers and people who had witnessed workers on the job. Twenty-five industries were represented in the study. Here are some of her findings from respondents: 

  • 76% deal with incivility at least once per month on the job 
  • 70% see and hear incivility two to three times per month on the job 
  • 78% claim customer bad behavior is more frequent than five years ago 

Dr. Porath has been conducting surveys of this sort for some time. In 2005 approximately 50% of employees reported they were treated poorly at work at least once a month. In 2011 this number rose to 55% and in 2016 it jumped again to 62%. 

Our careers cannot flourish amidst a barrage of atrocious behavior delivered from the very individuals we are trying to help. Most jobs present plenty of inherent challenges with which to contend as it is. Work is rarely an easy and carefree endeavor even under the best of circumstances. Piling on impertinent and ill-mannered behavior risks making our jobs unpleasant and unsustainable. 

Given this situation, two basic questions come to mind. What is causing the increase in incivility? What can we do about it? 

I will go out on a limb here and make the claim that very few people, if any, are natural born jerks. Further, I think people are basically social, want to be nice to others, and want to be treated kindly in return. Fundamentally, we all understand that to make it in this world we need the help of others and the best way to receive assistance is to be agreeable with one another. 

What goes awry in a word is stress. Too many of us are mentally frazzled. There are countless reasons for our stress from unmanageable pressures at work and home, to uncertainty about the future, to the unceasing flood of bad news from media, to our politics, to coping with pandemics — the list goes on and on. 

Stress is bad for our personal health and the health of our society. It deprives us all of living fruitful lives. Getting a collective grip and learning how to manage our stress levels and their injurious consequences is critical. Life is too short to be consumed with the amount of anger we are experiencing. 

Leadership is needed at times like these. We may not be able dictate how the public should always behave, but we can have leaders help our workplaces to better cope with the burden of incivility facing frontline employees. Prepare workers for when incivility happens, not if it may happen. We need leaders to coach, train, and lead by example how their workforces can best handle the repercussions of stress from among the very customers the business or organization relies upon. 

Best practices can be identified from those industries that deal with stress all the time. Police officers, health care workers, teachers, and many others have had to learn over time how to manage the unmanageable. There are techniques, attitudes, and lessons we can learn from them. Such interventions are no longer an accessory. They need to become an essential part of any job that deals with the public. 

Instead of the workplace reeling from bad behavior maybe it can be the place from which more acceptable social interactions are derived. Alleviating incivility on the job is a great place to start. 

Energizing Your Career

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Keeping a career vibrant, meaningful, and worthwhile takes intentionality. As career-driven individuals we have an imperative to steer ourselves along a course leading to all the beneficial rewards a successful career can provide. No one can rely on being showered with blessings from afar for a fabulous career. We each need to own this one. 

We often talk about keeping our focus on a set of workplace constructs that will make the difference between being minimally engaged with our jobs or truly embracing them. So, we gauge our achievement levels in areas such as skills mastery, motivational techniques, attractive compensation, work-life balance, and team cohesion among others. However, it is possible that we may be overlooking one simple and obvious, but admittedly elusive, point of concern to best boost our careers — our individual energy levels. 

Feeling energetic is perhaps the most important attribute we can bring to any job. All our talents and expertise are diminished and less valuable if we do not have the physical, emotional, and cognitive energy to perform optimally. And it is not just our productivity that is negatively impacted by low energy. Our mood, self-concept, and demeanor can be adversely affected as well. Taking the time to assess what energizes you versus what drains you may be one of the best things you can do for your career. 

So, where to begin? The Energy Project is a workplace development firm that attempts to peg organizational improvement to the well-being of the organization’s workforce. The premise of their approach states that high performance requires highly energetic individuals. To this end, The Energy Project presents an energy enhancing model they claim is science-based and effective in promoting personal energy for busy people. 

Examining The Energy Project’s design for furthering individual energy offers insights we each can utilize toward fulfilling our own personal goal to get more energized. It begins with an understanding that our energy stems from four different domains: the body, the emotions, the mind, and the spirit. If we can advance conditions in each of these areas, then we can find ourselves more invigorated and better able to face challenges. 

Let’s unpack these. The body refers to our physical stamina. Yes, we are talking about adequate exercise, nutritional foods, proper amounts of sleep, cutting out or at least down the drinking, and maintaining moderate weight. Sure, you have heard it all before. But this time let us reframe these practices as ways of strengthening our careers. 

Energy is further enhanced when we can manage our emotions. Rather than being continually buffeted by external events that affect our moods and anxiety levels, we can choose instead to find ways of controlling our emotional response to the inevitable pressures and sudden demands of the workplace. So often we slip into fight or flight modes of reacting to too much strain, which ill prepares us for working at our best. 

Upgrading our ability to concentrate and focus our attention is the foundation of mind improvement in this model. Here is news you can use — multitasking diminishes productivity and distractions are ruinous! We can discover and rehearse practices leading to fewer interruptions and deeper immersion in the task at hand while curtailing disturbances that only keep us off our game. Also necessary is to allow ourselves time for mental renewals. 

Our spirit is indistinguishable from our purpose. When we care about what we do and work consistently within our values we feel viscerally connected to our careers. Such an association is energizing. Know how to prioritize requests for your time so that you are spending time on those people and jobs most important. Practice observing yourself. Know the situations that best get you to your sweet spot. 

The bottom line here is to accept the unmistakable link between our energy and our career. And just possibly, more energy may vitalize your life as well. 

Instituting Workplace Flexibility

Posted on by Bill Ryan

The demand for and expectation of workplace flexibility for employees is a construct that is not going away anytime soon, if ever. The confluence of ever-developing technological means, new generational expectations, particularly by Millennials, and pandemic-related work experiences is leaving business leadership with the challenge of meeting production goals with workforces yearning for more resiliency in how they operate on the job. This phenomenon provides individual workers like you with potential opportunities, but also possible obstacles, as you pilot your careers. 

This is a time to observe how your employers assess and manage workplace flexibility as you determine if your current employment is meeting the needs of your individual career development. 

Initially, ascertain if your employer even considers workplace flexibility a talent management issue. If not, then you will have learned a fundamental quality about your employer and should consider future employment with them accordingly.  

If, on the other hand, your employer demonstrates a willingness to engage the workforce with operational practices which attempt to satisfy both employer and employee needs in a harmonious way, then attempting to participate with management fruitfully may be warranted. 

Balance and moderation should be key features of any workplace flexibility set of policies and procedures. As many businesses realize, this is easier said than done. Flexibility practices can range from employee accommodations, such as allowing for an employee to deal with personal emergencies or other nonwork-related activities to negotiating with employees as full partners in designing an alignment that takes into consideration the interests of employers and employees. Widespread empowerment that results in optimal production and ideal proficiency throughout an organization is the primary goal. 

Practices like employee accommodation, mentioned above, and another now common routine, the always-on workplace, do offer employees adaptability compared to legacy workplaces, but have inherent risks associated with them which may be counterproductive. In accommodation scenarios, managers are in the role of giving permission to employees to take time off to satisfy an employee request, if the manager sees fit to do so. A hierarchical structure is assumed. 

Also, the workforce can become bifurcated between those who more frequently need accommodation, such as women with greater child, household, and elderly parent needs and men, who in general handle these demands less. Resentments from both groups can result. 

Problems surrounding the always-on or boundaryless workplace are now becoming well publicized. This is the type of flexibility in which workers can be engaged anywhere and at any time. Work-anytime arrangements can leave employees working longer hours and carrying more stress than if they remained in traditional on-site settings and confined to well-defined start and stop times. Employers too can be disadvantaged by an always-on model. Retaining valuable talent can be difficult when workers realize their work-life balance is too disrupted and a perception sets in that employers are over-advantaged in the flexibility configuration. 

Researchers Ellen Ernst Kossek, Patricia Gettings, and Kaumudi Misra reveal that superior workplace flexibility arrangements are achieved when employers provide structures comprised of a variety of flexibility choices, related equipment, and positive performance-management mechanisms within which employees commit to organizing how they can best work. Foundational to such an agreement is an intentional diminishment of the top-down hierarchical model to one honoring trust, power sharing, accountability, and respect for the contributions of everyone within the organization. 

Upon this groundwork can spring other necessary features, including universal flexibility for all employees; unambiguous policies and procedures regarding flexibility; better enabled employees and managers; a culture that does not discourage flexibility; and continuous measuring of outcomes with agreed upon policy alterations as needed. 

Above all, there is the need for competent leadership who can embrace workplace flexibility, effectively communicate its objectives, and practice the agility required to make the model work for all. An effective workplace flexibility reorganization can both enhance competitiveness and enliven careers. 

Flextime Workplaces: An Update

Posted on by Bill Ryan

As has been widely reported over the past couple of years, workplaces, particularly in the knowledge economy, have either undergone or are being pressured to add flexibility features to their operations. The combination of Covid-related adjustments and technical innovations has resulted in a reassessment of what productivity and by extension appropriate workplace agency looks like in the modern workplace. 

A 2021 Ipsos survey revealed that globally 30% of workers would attempt to leave their jobs if required to return to the pre-pandemic office setting. Many of the ever-plugged-in younger cohort of workers see only an upside to having jobs with flextime. Benefits such as managing the complex demands of modern living, taking care of children and elderly parents, reducing commuting time, and functioning when one is most energetic and constructive during the day are among the advantages cited as desirable with pliable scheduling and task requirements. 

Flextime features are now much more present in recruiting job descriptions. Some of this is undoubtedly because of the increased demand for flexibility from a workforce that seems to be sorting itself into those oriented toward results-only vs. traditional workplaces, but also due to the uncertainty of the future. Covid has not completely gone away and with further environmental changes said to be coming from climate change, who knows what is next? Disruption is at least as likely as stability when planning operationally. 

However, workplace changes of the sort being described here need to be assessed and designed thoughtfully. It can be easy to dump on traditional workplaces as having rigid, arbitrary, and ineffectual routines, like for example, habitually scheduled staff meetings laden with fill-in blah, blah, blah. Yet, as resiliency transformations occur it can be useful to see not only what is gained, but also what is lost by such modifications. 

A case could be made that as customary practices dissolve not all the consequences may be necessarily positive. Of key importance is what it means to be professional. Parameters were established over time to separate work life from non-work life. We got used to sliding in and out of work modes with a regularity that brought predictability, certainty, and some semblance of balance. 

One negative element of blurring the distinction between work and leisure time is the always “being on” phenomenon. When flitting in and out of work mode multiple times per day, including answering supervisor emails at 8:30 pm and being ready to respond to the Amsterdam office at 6:30 am, cumulative work time can approach 10-12 hours. It begs the question of who benefits. Probably not the worker. 

Also, professional norms and protocols used in performance reviews and advancement decisions have been based on an in-person work context. Are the expected actions of workers who work from home holding up fairly to legacy achievement standards? Managers still wedded to the notion that time on task always equals productivity may be less inclined to favorably view fragmented work as effective, even if the results are of similar quality or perhaps even better than before. 

This can be especially problematic for new hires onboarded with a company practicing flextime. How well can management really get to know their direct reports when they are working remotely? Perhaps fine — or perhaps not. New workers are motivated to do well at their new jobs and are trying to navigate expectations and learn company culture digitally. Might they be ripe for various types of exploitation, such as working exceptionally long hours or having to face other unreasonable demands from management or co-workers in a flextime environment? The possibility is certainly there. 

Decentralization does have its benefits. But it also could have liabilities. As we redefine what it means to be professional in a flextime world, we need to be mindful of how to achieve efficiency in a way that rewards both management and front-line workers. This challenge is a subset of organizational agility and a crucial one going forward. 

A Coming Workforce Transformation

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Career prospects for women during the economy of the past couple of years show significant disillusionment. By the end of 2020, 140,000 jobs in the U.S. which had been held by women were lost in female-dominant industries like education, hospitality, and retail according to Business Insider. The National Women’s Law Center reported in 2021 that about two-thirds of all minimum wage jobs are held by women. Unemployment rates remain high for women of color and women with disabilities. 

The past years have also not been encouraging for professional women seeking to secure leadership positions, particularly in highly capitalized businesses. Julia Boorstin of CNBC reported in 2020 that of the 500 largest American companies only 6% of CEOs were women. Not only that, but there is this occurrence of women being placed in CEO positions of troubled companies struggling to hang on. The phenomenon is known as the “Glass Cliff” problem. If the ship cannot be quickly righted to profitability, then it can be easier for some to say how a woman was given a chance to show leadership, but it just did not work out. 

McKinsey reveals another stunning circumstance. The proportion of women in jobs declines as the amount of responsibility embedded within these jobs increases. Women make up 50.8% of the American population, but account for 47% of entry-level positions, 38% of management assignments, and 33% of senior management occupations. For every 100 men who move into management roles, there are 85 women who do so. 

The history of women in the workforce facing discrimination, unequal pay, and harassment in one form or another is a painfully long one. However, there are some other statistics which curiously suggest more positive changes may be coming for women in the workforce. 

The writer David French points to some recent education stats showing men are slipping in acquiring the schooling necessary to stay highly qualified and competitive for the good jobs, and for leadership roles particularly. For example, at the end of the 2020-2021 college academic year women comprised 59.5% of the overall student body, the highest ever, and men only 40.5%. This data is from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research group. 

Furthermore, the 2020-2021 school year showed a decline of 1.5 million students relative to five years earlier. 71% of that drop was in men leaving U.S. colleges and universities! For a reason I cannot explain, men’s attendance has fallen such that they have become a minority cohort in higher education. Can a drop in men’s career prospects relative to women, including in leadership, be far behind? 

One does not have to look far to notice an unmistakable correlation between levels of education and career success. Acquisition of knowledge, skill, experience, contacts, and confidence are all derived from furthering one’s education. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics most recent data concerning earnings and unemployment rates by educational attainment show median weekly earnings for those holding only a high school diploma to be $781, but with an unemployment rate of 9%. The bachelor’s degree college graduate in comparison earns on average $1305 per week with an unemployment rate of 5.5%. 

To be sure, the traditional four-year college degree program model is under serious review, as it should be, by those who foot the high cost. More targeted and lower cost education and credentialing options are providing increasing competition to legacy college and university programs. That’s fine. But if men think the good jobs and leadership positions will always be waiting for them as in the past, while women are actively preparing to compete and hold those occupations for themselves at rates superior to males, then men may be in for a rude awakening soon. 

As women gain more of the good jobs and leadership roles, they are likely to open more doors for other women to participate more fully in quality education and work opportunities. As education attainment shifts more to women, so too will their employment and leadership strength. 

Career Adaptability in a Time of Economic Resilience

Posted on by Bill Ryan

As a people, we habitually want to return to normal after a sudden disruption. To seek stable ground after a storm is what we are hard-wired to do. The pent-up desire to reclaim regularity throughout this pandemic is palpable. We want so much to snap back to a 2019-era lifestyle that it may be hindering our capacity to plan for what increasingly looks like an uncertain future. 

A combination of Covid’s aversion to disappearing and more general workforce changes promote doubtfulness in the minds of many about future economic, and by extension, career directions. Questions as basic as, will my job be permanently home-based and remote, or will my job, which is centered on being face-to-face with many people, forever now to be risky? These are existential questions. 

Career resilience, or the ability to navigate one’s professional life through the turbulent vicissitudes of the 21st century employment environment, is not a new topic. Remaining nimble and adept enough to reapply one’s skillset to changing situations has been advised by career professionals for years now. Of course, such advice has most often been given in the context of technological automation and cross-market globalization. 

The unsettled world of Covid, however, only adds to the urgency. Emerging variants of the virus and the patchwork way nations and regions respond to the emergency leaves Covid-fatigued people feeling discouraged that we can get past this anytime soon. Optimism rises and fades like the graphs of infection rates. As far and as wide as we can see, the economy is being buffeted by winds of Covid-generated incertitude. Career resilience becomes but a subset to the larger challenging phenomenon of economic resilience. 

The National Association of Counties identifies economic resilience as, “a community’s ability to foresee, adapt to, and leverage changing conditions to their advantage”. The U.S. Department of Commerce is more blunt in its description. Commerce questions an entity’s proficiency to endure and to rally from a severe disruption, and its ability to avoid crises in the first place. The take-away inference is that acceptance of the proverbial new normal and requisite mitigation planning is to be standard operation. 

The interests of non-entrepreneurial workers are served when employees understand the sustainability planning and related past practices of the employers for whom they work or want to work. If an employer is overly relying on luck to get them through or is in denial about change occurring, these should be warning signs. Do not let the miscalculations of others derail your career. 

What we want to see instead are signs of employers envisioning and assessing risks to their markets and assets. These are sometimes known as steady-state actions. From there they should be prepared to deploy a response strategy when crisis strikes.  

Included in this overall approach can be interventions such as sustainability budget planning; diversification efforts to reduce exposure to high risk sectors; gardening of workforces which will ride out disruptions and not quickly bail; alignments with business, government, and educational resources to keep forecasting and preparedness skills sharp and ready; and agile management capable of shifting available talent to meet unexpected needs effectively. 

Continuity planning for an organization or an individual share certain processes. Key among them is to know the weak areas. Where are the shortcomings? How can they be managed or strengthened? Which metrics apply to indicate success is being achieved? 

Another key process is in knowing the threat indicators early on. Take advantage of utilizing a natural or trained inclination to be preventative and farsighted. 

Above all, establish systems, procedures, and habits, which have resiliency built into them. Facing turmoil requires a degree of fortitude. Until Covid is somehow controlled worldwide the economic and career challenges related to the virus will continue. Confronting the menace clear-eyed and purposeful is a potent response. 

Workers Are Flexing Their Muscles

Posted on by Bill Ryan

An unmistakably big story in the 2021 career space has been about what is being dubbed “The Great Resignation” or “Turnover Tsunami”. Of course, I am referring to the throngs of workers in both the relatively high paying knowledge economy, but also in the lower income sectors, like hospitality and retail, who are leaving or not returning to their pre-pandemic fields of employment. 

A whopping 40% of the global workforce has left or is planning to leave jobs this year. The U.S. Labor Department has never seen such an acute spike in resignations in the twenty plus years it has been tracking such statistics. 

The popular media has for months now been pumping out pieces referring to the phenomenon and the suspected reasons behind it, such as higher savings rates thanks to government financial assistance, fear of catching the virus at work, insufficient childcare options for working parents, and a growing realization that a lot of hiring is now going on.  

However, the monumental reason for this employment churn appears to be a dignity factor. The Covid pandemic is allowing for a massive reassessment, and by extension, a realignment of what truly matters in one’s work and life. 

Shelter-in-place directives, social distancing, and closed office buildings, restaurants, and stores shook people’s mindsets in numerous ways. Many front-line “essential” workers who were heralded as heroes early in the pandemic are now either burnt out or tired of the abuse they get, like healthcare workers. Many well compensated workers ensconced in jobs pertaining to information flows and the means of production are bailing from positions because of the stress levels and long hours. Those on the low socioeconomic end feel abused, disrespected, and exploited and are not going to take it anymore. The number of workers and the type of worker taking the employment shift plunge are both expanding. 

This spectacle is causing economic hardships for a range of stakeholders from business owners to customers. The flux in employment is helping to fuel in part the larger pandemic-related worldwide economic convulsion. Shouldn’t we all be really concerned about this dramatic and disruptive turn of events?  

Yes, we should be, but not of fear for the interests of the wealth holders becoming suddenly inconvenienced, but in support of workers who are all in different sounding ways and from different points of view collectively saying they want and expect fair compensation, respect, and a voice in how their careers are going to develop. This brief period in history may be seen as a possible inflection point in the 21st century morphing of work and career into something different from the way it has been in the past. 

I come back to the three intrinsic motivators for professional workers eloquently described by Daniel Pink about ten years ago. Pink wrote and spoke about the need and quest for autonomy, mastery, and purpose as to what gets successful and satisfied workers out of bed in the morning. We are more motivated and driven to perform well at our jobs when we feel we have relatively free rein to innovate and produce, when we feel we are developing a skill or talent, and when we feel that what we are doing at work matters in a value sense. 

It seems to me that what many of these job searchers are looking for comes very close to what Pink is describing. Combine dignified levels of compensation with workplace cultures that honor worker autonomy, mastery, and purpose and a job can become more satisfying and sustainable. 

I get that some just want a decent job and not a career, but what makes an employee want to stay and thrive is fundamentally not very different between a highly educated contributor and an hourly employee. Dignity and respect can go a long way. 

Revitalizing Meritocracy

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Merit denotes goodness. It is a word synonymous with excellence, value, and quality. We strive to live meritorious lives, because to do so brings happiness to others and distinction to ourselves. When society thrives, it does so largely due to the actions and contributions of people displaying merit. 

There is no hotly contested debate about the virtue of merit. It is generally thought to be a desired attribute, particularly among employees. What boss would not want to have positive, reliable, and worthwhile workers on her team? And yet, another term derived from the word merit, meritocracy, seems to be under fire. 

Broadly speaking, meritocracy refers to an institutionalizing of talent, ability, and skill which when present and operational results in optimally run organizations, whether in business, government, or the nonprofit sector. Compensation and power are steered toward those individuals who best demonstrate the desired traits of a meritocracy such as intelligence, valued credentials, and solid performance. 

I always thought meritocracy was an affirmative construct, so I have been surprised to see that meritocracy has now become, counter-intuitively for me at least, a controversial concept. To see why, I decided to examine what the dispute is all about. 

Examples of meritocratic administration are historic reaching back millennia. More recently though, it turns out the word meritocracy was originally coined and used derogatorily in 1958 by a British politician who was criticizing the British education system as overly favoring student intelligence and aptitude above other characteristics, leading to elitism. 

It was not until 1972 when Harvard sociologist Daniel Bell put a positive spin on the term by championing a combination of intelligence and energy as ideologically desirable. Today, there are many proponents and critics of meritocratic systems. Their divergent views seem to rest on differences in how one determines what is fair in an organization or institution. 

For example, Jim Whitehurst, who is now president of IBM, is bullish on meritocracy. He sees only advantage in strongly rewarding the best people with the best ideas. Establishing a culture that encourages listening and sharing and where every associate can contribute makes it easier for management to discern which inspirations result in high end gains over time. By enabling leaders to spot emerging talent and to position this ability where they can create the greatest value, followed by generous compensation for the quality influencers, is the hallmark of a highly functioning meritocracy. Keeping associates engaged and identifying in-house leadership makes for a stronger organization. 

A recent significant criticism of meritocracy was released in 2019 in the form of a book, The Meritocracy Trap by Yale law professor Daniel Markovits. He sees meritocracy as “a pretense, constructed to rationalize an unjust distribution of advantage.” According to Markovits, meritocracy has two profound liabilities — it is often an unfair system that benefits those of a certain traditional type of leadership, say white males over women or minorities, and that those seen as meritorious find their lives consumed by competition and long hours devoted to the company. Hence, the trap. In practice, not all talent really percolates to the top and if one is “lucky” enough to be among the chosen, then one’s life becomes less than satisfying. 

So, does meritocracy need reform? It depends on how “fair” is defined within an organization that purports to practice it. The style of meritocracy described by Whitehurst sounds fair to me, if and only if, the culture is truly open to high quality ideas no matter who puts them forth and that selection of those with desired aptitudes are chosen for their skills and abilities alone and not for extraneous considerations. And Markovits’ point about exploitation of expertise is also in need of monitoring, primarily by those whose careers and lifestyles are most affected. 

One thing advocates and critics alike can agree on is that merit is a virtue to be promoted and defended. We all benefit when it is. 

Self-Awareness and Your Career

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Psychology plays a significant role in the development of our careers. It starts with identifying our work interests when we are young and expands over time to include interpersonal relations, self-motivation, passion for what we do, attitudes toward superiors, team cooperativeness, and many other job-related aspects. Perhaps most importantly psychology speaks to how constructive we are on the job and the way we manage our mental well-being and stress levels while on the road to productivity. 

Effective performance is dependent on how a worker feels at work. Safety, security, and freedom from harassment are basic. Beyond that, feeling appreciated and being prepared to work efficiently sets up an employee to be a valued contributor. Quality management can be instrumental in establishing and maintaining such workplace conditions. But realizing the benefits of positive psychology is not just the responsibility of management. The state of our psychology is ultimately up to each of us individually — in life as well as at work. 

Perhaps the key psychological quality determining how well we will flourish in our careers is self-awareness. Individuals with keen self-awareness possess a nearly full perception of their emotional makeup, potential, imperfections, requirements, and what energizes them. They are well equipped to capitalize on their strengths while managing their weaknesses. Self-aware professionals carry with them a quiet self-confidence based on honesty and realism knowing they do not have to fake it to make it. Their success results from a work product competently delivered, but not exceeding their capacity to perform effectively. They know what they know and “know” what they don’t know. 

Self-awareness need not be thought of as some metaphysical trait held by only a few anointed people. We all practice it to some degree. For example, if we know that too many scheduled meetings packed closely together stress us out, then we work to make sure the meetings during which we are expected to participate are spaced such that we can contribute optimally. 

If we get anxious when seeing our email inbox overflowing with superfluous messages, then we let our co-workers know to only send messages of significant importance. If we know our best work comes from meeting deadlines, then we structure our workflow such that tasks needing completion by a specific time are stacked accordingly. (You don’t have control about such conditions with your job? You may be in the wrong job.) 

An additional benefit of self-awareness is its extended usefulness to co-workers. The self-aware colleague is less likely to lash out in frustration or to make unreasonable demands of others. They have a leg up on assessing the capacity levels of their fellow associates and can sense how each best accomplishes their assignments. Team functioning and work yield are enhanced the more self-aware team members are. Self-aware coworkers and managers can serve as models, if not unofficial mentors, thereby improving the overall workforce. 

Self-awareness is internally cultivated over time. Developing this ability is largely linked to how reflective we each choose to be. Reflection is a chief component of critical thinking. As we refine our reflective skill, we find ourselves more adept in examining, analyzing, and assessing experiences, which better informs how we address future challenges. 

For some of us, building in time and effort to be reflective may need to be more intentional. If we observe that our default mode is to keep plowing through the details and minute-by-minute demands of our jobs without purposefully reflecting on what insights we can gain from the approaches we take, then we deny ourselves the richness that can come from reflection and by extension self-awareness. 

In short, self-awareness brings increased clarity to our work values and goals. Our decisions are improved and our objective of strengthening and deriving more satisfaction from our careers becomes more likely. 

Don’t worry. Very few of us have reached self-awareness nirvana. So, give yourself a break and start or continue to polish this aptitude wherever you are on the spectrum. 

Assessing the Dignity of Work

Posted on by Bill Ryan

A lofty phrase that has been around for a while, but has gained newly found prominence in recent years, is the term “dignity of work”. It is uttered across the political spectrum, because it is widely thought to have universal respect and acceptance. Who could possibly argue with a concept which conveys cherishment of commitment, skill development, and above all personal responsibility to provide for oneself and their family? Dignity of work harkens not only to a pride of traditional labor honestly performed but can also inspire and motivate all working-aged adults to do their part for the economy and community. 

The dignity of work is seen as a sublime end in itself. We were raised to accept a lifetime of work. Work is contributing. Work is doing your duty. Work is good and more selfless work is better. Achievement of a profound sense of satisfaction that comes from doing a job well is the ultimate reward for our labors, or so we are told. The grateful pat on the back from a coworker, the smile and nod from the boss, the eloquent testimonial from a delighted customer together represent just some of the energizing commendations that make work invaluable. 

So, why then is work not felt so favorable or worthwhile for so many? We do not have to look far to see people unhappy with their work. The dignity of work is elusive for more workers than it should be. A Harvard Business Review survey in 2019 of 500+ workers found the vast majority (90%) expected to find joy in their work but given time on the job only 37% experienced joy. A few years ago, Gallup reported only 30% of workers engaged with their jobs. Forbes cited a survey of 411 workers, 19% of whom were satisfied with their jobs. I could go on. 

Dignity is not inherent in work. Labor cannot be dignified unless some basic conditions are met. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops advocates for fundamental worker rights as a prerequisite for work dignity such as availability of productive work, fair and sufficient compensation, and a permission structure allowing for organizing and unionization among other rights. 

Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio calls for enhancements of wages and benefits, healthcare costs, and retirement programs as a way of assuring dignity. Ezra Klein in the New York Times points to elimination of harmful and oppressive workplaces and for management to encourage workers to remain healthy and have leisure and family time. 

I would add removal of tyrannical management, toxic coworkers, and workplace cultures that devalue portions of the workforce. 

However, beyond stating what is not wanted to engender dignity in work, let us focus on practices likely to lead to dignity. Workers by and large want the chance to be self-motivated. There are three key situations which encourage this. As pointed out by Daniel Pink in his book Drive, fostering an environment where workers are urged to develop mastery of their profession, exercise autonomy in decision making, and define personal and professional purpose in what they do all matter greatly. 

Workers want to be respected and given the freedom to grow. They want to be able to sustain reasonable financial needs by working only one 40-hour per week job. They want executive management who understand the principal capital in their firms are their employees, who need to know they are valued. They want the support of customers who intentionally direct their dollars toward businesses that treat their employees with dignity. (It begs the question, is a business model that requires employees working for only $7.25 per hour worthy of staying in business in this day and age?) 

Dignity of work should continue to be a universal value, but let’s not cling to some notion it arises spontaneously, especially under adverse conditions. It does not. Dignity may be felt individually, but it takes a community to see it is broadly shared. 

Employment Struggles for Older Workers

Posted on by Bill Ryan

It’s happening again. One of the perverse hallmarks of the Great Recession ten years ago was the expulsion of many older workers from the workforce. A significant number of experienced employees found themselves forced into sudden unemployment or premature retirement. Many never fully recovered financially or emotionally and their careers were left scarred and lacking in dignified closure. 

The current Covid-induced recession is again presenting similar employment hardship for mature workers. Since March, the labor market has shed many senior-aged men and women, who possess both high and low skill levels. In other words, this elder layoff is widespread. 

Unfortunately, this is not turning out to be simply a temporary furlough for these workers, but rather a longer-term separation marked by an acceleration of egregious trends. Again, as during the last recession, newly trending labor shifts are weakening older workers’ employment security. 

Previous examples included labor-saving technologies and increased workloads for younger and less expensive staff, which combined to lessen the management need to restore previous personnel levels. Once again, mature employees find their bargaining power diminished when facing dismissal and rehiring. Weak or non-existent unions, the rise of the gig economy, and continued lenient enforcement of age-discrimination laws, not to mention the harmful economic disruption from Covid, leave senior workers feeling increasingly insecure and inadequate. 

The New School’s Retirement Equity Lab studies the factors impacting the quality of retirement, which necessitates an examination of when a retreat from work is chosen or forced. Their assessment of the plight of older workers is sobering. Even for those older workers who have not yet been laid off there is considerable uncertainty about their futures. This cohort more and more knows they are less employable than younger workers. Those over age 55 often realize that if they were to quit their current jobs the chances of transitioning to a job that is comparable or better is doubtful. For many, it becomes prudent to stick with a less than satisfying job, then to risk unemployment. 

Relatively robust earnings have traditionally been an expectation for long-term commitment to a profession and/or an employer. Seems fair, right? However, these days when an older worker is rehired after a job loss hourly wages are typically lower than with the former job. Workers aged 50-61 receive 20% less pay with their new job while workers 62 and older see a decrease of 27%. In addition, once a worker hits their fifties, periods of unemployment after a layoff are longer than for workers aged less than 50. 

The growth in ambiguity and low confidence older workers face add to the weakness of their bargaining power. Employers know in most cases that they have the upper hand with older workers, except for those situations in which the worker possesses a unique or hard to find skill. This is unfortunate. A lifetime of work deserves value and respect. Retirement in the modern era should be a reward for the toil, dedication, and achievement for decades of work, not an imposed isolation or banishment due to the vicissitudes of employment economics. 

As the Retirement Equity Lab points out, policy makers may need to intervene with schemes designed to lessen the hardships for prematurely laid off older workers. For example, employers could offer rainy day or emergency savings plans through payroll deductions, which become available when needed to augment unemployment benefits. Or the federal government could step in with a guaranteed retirement account savings option to supplement what retirees receive from Social Security. Of course, more stringent enforcement of The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 would help immensely. 

Careers for many are a vocation and a calling to develop mastery and contribute to society. For others, work is simply a means to a paycheck. Either way, growing old should not be viewed as a liability or a deficiency to take advantage of. 

Employment and the 2020 Election

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Here we go again. Time for another national election to choose a new Congress and a new president. The feeling in the air is that this election is more urgent and consequential than our garden variety face-offs, particularly at the presidential level. This choice of president is viewed as fundamentally determinative of the direction of the country and with starker contrast than most such contests. Or so both Republicans and Democrats claim. Great attention is being paid to this election and hopefully significant participation will be realized, which together should lead to a substantive and declarative outcome — like it or not. 

Typically, “It’s the economy, stupid!”. This time the sense is, “It’s the culture, stupid!”. Without getting into the developmental concerns related to our civilization’s maturation or lack thereof, economic claims, projections, and promises will likely continue to drive much of the partisan discussion. 

Are we Americans going to orient ourselves toward the past in an attempt to retain economic successes driven by tried-and-true practices previously delivered by legacy-styled business operatives or are we instead going to innovate and design for a paradigm-shifting economic future characterized by increasing competition, transformation, and multiculturalism? The decision we make will have consequences for the vitality of the economy going forward and for the quality of the employment it will spawn. 

Conventional wisdom states that if the economy is sufficiently robust, then vigorous employment will take care of itself. Indeed, high employment levels are intrinsic to a strong economy. Widespread employment matters. So, it is worth examining the economic approaches both parties are offering to see who is most prepared to fashion a jobs-rich environment over the next four years. Here is my broad summary of the selection before us. 

Donald Trump has shown us his economic priorities through past performance, which included low unemployment rates. Given that Republicans did not present a party platform this year we have to assume they are thinking ‘steady as she goes’. 

The Trump administration’s economic focus has been on individual and corporate tax cuts, deregulation targeted primarily to the energy and financial sectors, trade protectionism, immigration restriction, and rejection of a federal role in providing universal healthcare. In recent months there have also been attempts to resurrect the economy from the devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic by promoting a reopening or ‘get back to normal’ agenda. 

Joe Biden, despite pressure from the Democratic Party’s left flank, is not proposing sweeping or revolutionary changes to the economy, but does advance ambitious federal interventions, nevertheless. Principally, he is centered on reinvigorating America’s middle class by encouraging greater inclusivity across lines of race and levels of education with less income inequality and a reclamation of optimism born of opportunity. 

He wants to expand Obamacare, impose a more progressive tax code, eliminate middle class student debt, raise the federal minimum wage, encourage low-carbon manufacturing, combat climate change, and much more. Biden/Harris also have a 7-point detailed plan to defeat Covid and plan for future such threats. 

Both the incumbent and the challenger want full employment. Which ideology is likely to produce this universally desired outcome? Excluding all other factors which will influence who gets my vote, I see the following as salient with regards to employment. 

The past 150 years have generated great economic advancements resulting in profound improvements in the lives of many millions, both as consumers and as producers. We have learned a lot about how to engender wealth and to provide life enhancing products and services. There are lessons from the past worth carrying on. 

But the past is gone. What we must look forward to is the future with all its uncertainty and ambiguity. Meeting this challenge requires a mindset that sees more opportunity than threat from the future. I think it is this frame of mind that impresses me more than candidate tactics and positions. Durable, but resilient employment will best come from an outlook that sees the world as it really is and that enthusiastically leans into the contest. 

A Case for Working Class Unions

Posted on by Bill Ryan

We have heard in recent years the oft used terms wealth inequality and its subset income or wage inequality. Quantifiable evidence showing a multi-decade trend toward wealth inequality has been presented by left-leaning economists and think tanks fueling in large part the political activism of the left wing of the Democratic Party. An example of this type of data was released by the Urban Institute showing how in 1963 families at the top of the wealth distribution had six times the wealth of families in the middle, whereas by 2016 the rich families had twelve times the wealth of those in the middle. 

Currently, the Covid-19 pandemic is starkly revealing what can reasonably be seen as another economic misfortune of those on the lower end of the wealth spectrum. Many of the essential frontline workers, such as janitors, grocery store employees, health care workers, and childcare workers, among others, are those who have jobs that cannot be done via Zoom, email, and phone from home. They are at higher risk for contracting the virus given the in-person customer-facing demands of their work. This increased hazard in combination with relatively low pay for workers providing services we all need during these tough times bolsters an argument that this cohort deserves more respect and economic clout. 

It is hard to ignore how the decline of labor unions correlates rather neatly with the rise in wealth inequality. Many believe it is not just correlation we are seeing, but causation. The loss of a collective voice from the working class due to the long-standing chorus of anti-unionism has led to not only their diminished political leverage, but also to a drop in their living standards relative to more affluent sectors. Perhaps the income disparity argument is now poised to go beyond just a claim supported by longitudinal data and charts to one of fundamental fairness for workers who are crucial, especially during a national emergency. 

Now can be a time to talk about structural reforms that benefit the working class. The overarching goal should be to reorient the economic system such that everyone, no matter where they live on the wealth spectrum, can live healthy and safe lives while contributing to the common welfare of the country. This will mean examining and improving macro norms governing compensation, health care, the environment, safety regulations, family-friendly working hours, immigration, workplace grievances, and race relations. 

Increasing the power of low-income stakeholders need not be seen as a zero-sum redistribution simply for the sake of rebalancing a ledger. Instead, by empowering these workers we restore and reinvigorate a united voice among working people thereby enhancing overall prosperity and a strengthening of democracy.  

Working in concert to fortify one’s economic interests is widespread among the ‘Haves’. Chambers of Commerce, business associations, and national trade organizations fill this need for business owners and management. Why shouldn’t working people also be given capabilities to drive policy decisions through collective action? 

Unions fill this role. Many of the worker and social protections now codified into law which we enjoy today began as union initiatives. Social Security, child labor laws, antidiscrimination laws, workplace safety laws, unemployment insurance, minimum wage, 40-hour work week, and workers’ comp laws are just some of the now commonplace benefits realized because worker unions conceived, supported, and fought for these standards. 

It is unlikely we will snap back to the exact same economy we had before the pandemic. In the future we may look back on several social changes the virus will have jolted us into. Hopefully, one of these modifications will be a reckoning for how the working class portion of essential workers is to be treated and prioritized. A resurgence of unions for these workers is justified and past due. 

A Hospitality Story

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Recently I wrote a piece in which I lamented the condition of the hospitality industry as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. As of this writing, the economy is cautiously reopening around the country, including in both the hospitality industry and in the state of New Hampshire.  

However, it is also becoming clear there is a correlative rise in Covid infection rates following the reopenings. Whereas there is strong public sentiment to address both the public health and economic health of the nation and state, finding a satisfactory calibration benefiting both sides simultaneously still appears elusive. 

New Hampshire’s economy relies to a significant extent on the hospitality industry. This is not only to serve the state’s nearly 1.4 million residents, but to provide a backbone for the state’s lucrative tourism sector. Deterioration of hospitality services such as restaurants, hotels, resorts, amusement parks, theaters, and sporting venues will negatively impact tourism. The state of New Hampshire’s economy simply cannot afford to have that happen. Of course, we also cannot tolerate an adverse turnaround in the infection rate given the relatively favorable handling of the epidemic thus far in NH compared to many locations. 

Salvaging and rebuilding hospitality requires a management and employee workforce with agility, creativity, and resourcefulness exercising ingenuity and moxie beyond what has been required during past garden variety economic downturns. To get a sense of what this determination and imagination looks like on the ground I had the opportunity to converse with Lexi Townsend, owner of the Corner House Restaurant and Bar in Center Sandwich, NH.  

Lexi’s story is not only inspiring given the range of obstacles with which she was suddenly confronted, coupled with the ongoing originality she has had to muster to keep her business alive, but her situation and responses provide a glimpse into the kind of resilient decision making required to not only save a business, but an industry. 

Lexi Townsend is a long-term hospitality professional with restaurant experience that includes work as a server, host, manager, and owner. Most of her career has been in management of fine dining establishments in both urban and rural settings. Just before Governor Sununu mandated restaurants were to no longer accept on-site patrons in mid-March her chef resigned. After the shut-down order nearly all her service staff followed stay-at-home orders from the state government. 

Not wanting to close the business Townsend and one of two remaining employees took on chef duties and facilitated curbside pickup takeout orders from their website’s menu. Knowing many Squam Lake residents were shut in she offered local area delivery of both bulk and prepared food items. Many of these deliveries were done dockside, giving the service a Lakes Region flavor.  

Other events included “Feed the Frontline” serving care staff from Speare Memorial Hospital and a drive-through Mothers Day/Memorial Day barbecue involving community volunteers. 

Looking ahead to reopening, Lexi knew she needed to rebuild her server team. Offering employment and housing for J-1 visas to foreign nationals was considered, but that is now banned by the president. Instead, she has begun piloting a junior service program to train young staff members with limited server experience. Knowing the importance of safety, comfort, and visual communication she has purchased transparent face shields for servers in lieu of masks. The expectation is patrons need to feel not only secure, but also want to be understood and consoled by seeing the faces of their servers. 

Overall, Lexi is optimistic for the future of her business. Although her expectation is that once the Paycheck Protection Program is concluded the economy will plunge further. Nevertheless, she believes her restaurant’s good reputation and obvious commitment to survival will sustain the business. A new chef was recently hired and plans for a safe and enjoyable in-house dining experience are underway. 

Lexi’s advice for her fellow hospitality providers going forward is to persevere above all.  Be mindful of changing times, be adaptable, and know customers want protection in addition to a rich experience. Also, to understand and to accept recovery will take a long time. 

No question, these times are a stress test. Working smarter, not just harder, is essential. 

Hospitality, Crisis and Promise

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Such wreckage. Such devastation. Such uncertainty. The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the present, shattered futures, and taken lives. In a quick couple of months life, as we have known it has been turned upside down. There is much to despair about this shock to our previously well-constructed world. Looking for hope can seem unattainable, especially for those whose careers, livelihoods, and businesses have been heavily damaged. 

I especially mourn for what is happening to the hospitality industry. Restaurants, hotels, resorts, amusement parks, theaters, concerts, sporting events and the like are where we go to refresh and rewind by enjoying time with friends and family, interacting with others, and being treated warmly by caring staffs. 

Hospitality is in many ways one of the most human of all career choices. Here is where your value is largely determined by how well you engage with others and how well you make others feel. Being socially distant is aversive to hospitality. It is like trying to paint landscapes with only two colors. The genial experience is catastrophically abridged when we are apart. 

Hospitality was to be the great redeemer for a world becoming increasingly technical, remote, and isolated. At its core, hospitality resisted the forces of automation and outsourcing, which is transforming so many other lines of work. It benefited from an economy relatively flush with disposable income. This industry really has made the world a better place to live. And now we ask ourselves, what happens to us all if our capacity to be social beings is painfully curtailed for the long term? 

In the US it is unlikely we will see the government stepping in to support hospitality for more than several months. Projections point to the second half of 2021 before a widely distributed and effective vaccine is put into place. Therefore, social distancing is expected to be among the chief tactics we have available to mitigate outbreaks during our slow build up to herd immunity. 

Then there is the very real fear people have about mingling as before. Think of the questions we could have while in crowds, such as who among these people is asymptomatic and carrying the virus? Why is that person coughing? Is it right to hug or shake hands with this friend anymore? How can I keep my glasses from fogging when wearing this darn mask? Many may and probably will opt for staying home. 

There are no easy answers or quick fixes for hospitality. That said, two broad ideas come to mind that may point to some sort of solution for the future of those whose hospitality jobs are evaporating. 

This is a time for hospitality professionals to reflect on their skills and the value they bring to the public. My advice is to inventory what it is about your engagements with people that activate your energy and bring deep satisfaction. Then think about other more employable areas where these talents can be expressed. For example, healthcare related services benefit from a workforce rich in soft hospitable skills infused with those of the technical expertise providers. Sales and customer services also are enhanced by those who can deliver personal, attentive, and solution-oriented care and advice. Think about it. There are many fields in which a hospitable mindset and presentation can find a home. 

Secondly, now is a time for the entrepreneurial, innovative, resourceful, and ingenious among us to design and develop novel ways of offering hospitality contributions that have not been tried before. The pent-up public demand is certainly there. Necessity is still the mother of invention. Let us please be pleasantly surprised by having creative hospitality professionals discover new and refreshing ways of building community, strengthening social interaction, and giving us respite from these stressful times, all while maintaining safe and prudent distancing measures. 

Times were dark in the economy ten years ago and they are even darker now. But if we are lucky, it may be our friends in hospitality who can shine a light when we most need it. 

Distributive Work Gets A Boost

Posted on by Bill Ryan

One of the significant consequences foisted upon the economy during the Covid-19 outbreak has been the rapid scaling of work completed outside of the office, i.e., at home. What is commonly known as remote work, now increasingly being referred to as distributive work, has been increasing over the past twenty years or so. But in its short history it never has experienced a shot of practice like it is getting now. 

My guess is that distributive work is conventionally thought of across most businesses as secondary in its productive impact relative to being onsite, not unlike the way online courses have tried shaking off their reputation of being course lite. However, the severity of social distancing to break the chain of virus transmission is forcing the knowledge economy to rely on high quality distributive work to stay alive as never before. Indeed, it is in the knowledge economy, comprised of smart and skilled workers producing goods and services worldwide, where distributive work holds its greatest promise. 

It may be useful to know the thoughts of someone who has pioneered and cultivated distributive work for years and is now a leading voice in the movement. Matt Mullenweg was one of the founding developers of WordPress, the digital content management system, and founder of the diversified internet company Automattic with ~1200 employees distributed over 70 countries. He continues to not only evangelize distributive work but leads a set of companies that practice it daily. 

He is also convinced distributive work need not be just an off-the-shelf option management reaches for during times of disruption, but a model of productivity capable of surpassing the performance of traditional office-setting work. 

Mullenweg promotes worker autonomy as key to motivation and efficiency and is much more concerned with worker output than input. While retaining some in-person collaboration, but in a much more reduced and targeted manner, he recognizes the impediments of cramming a lot of people onto a single site. A myriad of distractions such as office politics, intrusive co-workers and managers, long off-topic chats with co-workers, shared facilitates, a narrow set of expected in-house behaviors, and a feeling of having little control over likes and dislikes from the office temperature to the smell of someone’s lunch can all negatively factor into the worker feeling a lack of autonomy. 

With that in mind he identifies five levels of distributive work from low to high effectiveness. To quickly summarize: 

  • Level 1, which is now old-school, has workers using telephone and email offsite to augment their work, but with the belief that the “real” work is done at the office. 
  • Level 2 is an attempt to recreate the office elsewhere by use of VPN and conferencing software to supplement voice and email. Most business is still mired in levels 1 and 2. 
  • Level 3 demonstrates an intentional effort to adopt the best software and equipment available to share knowledge seamlessly and transparently across the organization. This can include good lighting, microphones, and communication tools like Zoom, Slack, and P2. 
  • Level 4 places a premium on asynchronous and written communication, meaning to move away from an over-reliance on live interactions. The goal here is to improve the quality of decision making even if its pace is slowed. 
  • Level 5 is where production capability is shown to be measurably improved over traditional work methods. 

Mullenweg contends the manufacturing factory model of all employees looking busy at the same time and in the same place does not always translate well into the cognitive economy. By valuing quantifiable and qualitative output primarily and providing workers with the means necessary to cooperatively join forces across distance the “workplace” can be not only redefined but rendered more fruitful. 

Looking for a humane and profitable opportunity amidst a global contagion may be difficult. Perhaps, refining distributive work is one such occasion. 

The Good and Bad of Personality Testing

Posted on by Bill Ryan

I’ve always been fascinated by personality tests, in particular the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). As a young education major many years ago, focused on the psychology of growth and learning, it seemed natural to accept a need to categorize people, whether students or employees with all their variability and complexity, into types, identities, and groupings. I came to believe that this knowledge could be used in many organizational ways including team building, workplace efficiency, student body cohesion, leadership training, personnel development, and general hiring to name a few. 

Today, there are many personality tests on the market with the MBTI remaining among the most popular in use with HR departments and management/training teams. DiSC, Color Code, CliftonStrengths, and Insights Discovery are also well known tools in this field. Other personality inventories are continuing to come on the scene as the science of type and application of AI becomes more refined. 

We are now looking at a $500 million industry with future growth rates estimated to be robust. Corporate, and in some cases small business America, are always in search of higher efficiencies. Some see personality testing as a means of achieving such an outcome. 

Business leadership may ask themselves, “Why wait for organizational culture to evolve when it can be shaped and structured according to my wishes?” As flippant as this sounds, there may be a sound rationale embedded in the question. Throwing a group of people together in the hope that company goals will be realized based on the strengths and experiences as seen on resumes and evaluations alone may be strategically weak. 

Individuals bring a myriad of personality characteristics, some of which may translate into positive contributions, while others may interfere with business processes. Applying tools that assist management in assessing their direct reports’ strengths and weaknesses more effectively could potentially result in more efficient sorting and assignment of talent. 

A doctrine underpinning personality testing is that there are no bad people, only bad fits of people. Someone who fits well with kindergarten students will probably make a lousy state trooper and vice versa. Cooperation, collaboration, and camaraderie are critical soft-skill practices for any workforce. Establishing conditions to encourage developing these soft skills can be a worthy management goal. If the edges of chaotic interpersonal dynamics can be smoothed and negative workplace politics mitigated, then why not intervene with data internally yielded by widespread use of personality inventories? It stands to reason productivity will be improved within a more satisfying work environment. 

A powerful criticism leveled for years concerns the lack of scientific validity of personality tests. Indeed, the MBTI is the least scientific of them all despite its prevalent use. Based on type theory developed by Carl Jung, a psychologist contemporary of Sigmund Freud, it can be said to be more art than science. Despite the MBTI’s uncanny ability to accurately identify a range of personal attributes as noted by the many people who have used it satisfactorily, including myself, there remains a persistent skepticism of its applicability due to a lack of experimental stringency regarding its claims. 

Additionally, there are claims by workers of being denied promotions, hiring, or leadership opportunities because of personality instrument results. Is it reasonable to expect there will be misapplications of these tests by managers whose skills lie in areas outside of psychology? As one who was trained in the interpretation and administration of the MBTI, I can attest to the deep levels of complexity and nuance to be considered in its use. Worth mentioning also is the likelihood of having employees who simply are uncomfortable with the ‘hocus-pocus’ of anything based on psychology. 

Whichever test is used, there should be trained professionals involved in an appropriate application of results. Regardless of potential downsides, personality instruments can occupy a favorable and constructive place in organizational management. 

The Impact of Cannabis on the Workplace

Posted on by Bill Ryan

I observed some tree service experts helping me to steward a 200-year-old white oak on my property recently. This involved bringing into a tight spot, which was occupied by my home, a fence, and accompanying power lines, a huge crane and bucket loader. As I watched them perform dangerous work skillfully and carefully to remove and lower many hundreds of pounds of wood that was suspended over my house the thought struck me that this is not work for stoners. 

Given the proliferation of states moving toward liberalization of cannabis for both medical and recreational purposes employers are faced with a new reality that many of their employees, if they aren’t already, may very well become users of cannabis, raising questions about what that will mean for workplace safety and productivity.  

Despite the federal designation of cannabis as a Schedule 1 drug, meaning a substance with no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse, the states in their role of democracy laboratories are rapidly adopting legalization of pot and with it a predicament for employers in these states regarding an appropriate response. 

To be clear, I get the reasons for the termination of the cannabis prohibition. The number of incarcerations, money spent dubiously on the war on drugs, lost employment, and lives ruined resulting from over-punitive measures for use of a relatively inoffensive intoxicant has finally caught up with outmoded cannabis laws. Citizens are increasingly being given a choice, as they have been with alcohol and tobacco, to indulge free of legal encroachment. Seen from a libertarian perspective, this is progress. 

However, there is a growing sentiment that with cannabis deregulation comes a belief that the drug must not be so bad after all. In other words, there is a declining perception of risk with marijuana. This sense itself carries a hazard. Alcohol and tobacco, despite their legal status, are still dangerous substances that can endanger lives and negatively impact places of work. Cannabis usage as well involves potential jeopardy, and its legalization should not imply its consumption is merely a docile activity. Despite expanded social acceptance of cannabis its downside should not be marginalized. 

In the context of employment, management is clearly justified in seeking to maintain a safe and productive work environment. Problems associated with cannabis in the workplace include increased accidents, injuries, absenteeism, worker compensation claims, and staff turnover with a corresponding decrease in productivity according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Maintaining a sober workforce enhances professionalism and efficiency. An erosion of this standard should not result from greater cannabis availability. 

Drug screenings have been around a long time and the drug most often detected is cannabis, leading to non-hires and terminations. Fairness questions arise though when employees are legally entitled to use cannabis either medically or for leisure.  

If intoxication from alcohol is evident on the job, then dismissal becomes straightforward. Cannabis on the other hand can stay in the user’s system for up to two days and up to a month for chronic users. Should employees be disciplined for indulging legally during their off hours even if residuals can be discovered long after the event via employers’ drug tests? Balancing clearly defined usage parameters in the workplace with employees’ legal rights is becoming trickier in this new age. 

Nevertheless, employees who work in positions requiring focus, concentration, and astuteness should feel obligated to self-monitor their cannabis usage free of external guidance. If you want to fly a plane, operate precision machinery, or lower 1800 lb. tree limbs over a residence, then you are choosing to sustain an alert and highly functioning mind without the desire to get stoned. The desire to master jobs of these sorts and to be counted on as a go-to expert in your field should hopefully provide enough incentive to self-regulate and maintain high standards of workplace conduct. Safety and effectiveness should be a shared concern among stakeholders across any workforce. 

How Neurodiversity May Improve Your Workforce

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Trying to recruit and retain talented workers who can assist in producing and delivering high quality products and services, leading to business growth and enhanced profits, has always been a formidable challenge. Typically, hiring teams seek individuals who not only most closely match the letter of the job description, but who also are predicted to be a good fit for the organization. In other words, companies want employees who can execute at what has been determined over time to be an optimal level that is consistent with the firm’s performance culture. 

Let us set aside for the purpose of this piece an admittedly huge hiring consideration, talent and ability, and ask might there be an inherent and unforeseen flaw in settling for only those candidates who appear during the hiring process to be consistent with traditional workforce practices and operational structures? By limiting a hiring search to simply those foreshadowed to be team players, could organizations be potentially restricting their chances of introducing and benefiting from innovative thinkers and value-added achievers? An increasing number of talent managers and human resource departments say this conventional thinking may indeed be a liability. 

There is a largely untapped element in the general candidate pool that may deserve a closer look. This cohort is becoming known as the neurodiverse. Neurodiversity refers to those workers possessing conditions frequently labeled as disorders, including autism, dyslexia, attention deficit, and social anxiety. You might be inclined to think that these types of job candidates should be weeded out of the search process due to their disruptive potential, but others are taking a chance at reframing the common perceptions of the neurodiverse and noticing positive traits where others see possible burdens. 

So, what might be favorable attributes of co-workers who may be seen by many as idiosyncratic, standoffish, ambiguous, or just plain different? Consider for a moment an organization comprised of workers who think largely in terms of doing things the way they have always been done. Change is minimal because it is seen as disorderly and therefore unnecessary. Risk aversion and homogeneity are commonplace. Company culture and individual behaviors are driven by such values and will perform accordingly. 

Sounds like a possible recipe for competitive disaster given current market requirements for innovation and agility. Neurodiverse employees could bring fresh perspectives and abilities not typically present to the work site. 

Neurodiverse skill sets can include high levels of intelligence, pattern recognition, systemic approaches to problem solving, exacting attention, comfort with repetition, deep-dive analysis, and even customer facing. Numerous industries can use resources with these skills, particularly technical and data-oriented ones. 

Another advantage can come from workers who are not motivated by office politics and the phrasing of opinions and conclusions in a group-think manner. As hard as it may be to hear, sometimes the straightforward truth is the best information to be communicated to colleagues and management. Neurodiverse employees may be best at delivering such news. 

Of course, recruiting and positioning neurodiverse talent can present difficulties, perhaps novel ones, for human resources and other department managers. Rather than using traditional interviewing it may be useful to set up teamwork simulations, case studies, or actual problem-solving sessions to see how productively all candidates function.  

Strategically integrating personnel who may provide unique services, but also potential breaches of protocol, could require careful planning, diplomacy, and tact. Flexibility and nimbleness, characteristics in short supply in many established organizations, may need to be adopted by company culture. 

We have reached a historic point where differences among people are more accepted than in the past. In fact, this seems to be a desirable attribute of the millennial generation. Developing such an ethic could aid businesses while also fostering more humane treatment of all people. 

Thoughts on Career-Long Learning

Posted on by Bill Ryan

As has been frequently reported, the nature of work is undergoing profound changes due largely to automation, technology, artificial intelligence, and globalization. This exacerbates fears among students and workers of how to succeed in an ever-transformative economy and contributes to the current and expanding situation of a workforce not possessing the skills required by modern and future-oriented employers. 

To keep up with groundbreaking changes in employment requires an educational approach to training and learning that is flexible, relevant, and targeted to the capricious and volatile state of the economy. At present, traditional education institutions of high school and customary higher ed bachelor’s degrees appear to be lagging behind innovative industry methodologies like short-term credentialing and user-responsive professional development. Businesses recognize the value in foresight and pliable learning strategies necessary to uphold a workforce prepared for unpredictability. 

Education systems are not known for their elasticity and capacity to adjust to change. Take a typical public high school curriculum, the stage through which most American workers first pass on their way to employability. Has there been much reorganization in the basic course load or method of earning a diploma since the mid-twentieth century? I think not. This is an area where increased pressure to innovate is warranted. 

Beside a reassessment of curriculum relevance, another key concept we can hope for from high schools is that the message is getting through loud and clear to students that education does not stop with a diploma. The modern world is one in which continuous learning needs to be embraced if there is any hope for enjoying the fruits of professional mastery and robust compensation. Linking the pursuit of happiness with the pursuit of learning is a valuable lifelong lesson. 

To this end, workers will benefit from a more accommodating and welcoming world of pathways designed to prepare entry-level professionals, upskill existing workers, and assist career changers in a manner consistent with the metamorphosing economy of work. In addition to an acceptance of the importance of career-long learning is to realize credentials matter. 

From a college degree to a professional license to an industry-specific certification, possessing evidence from a reputable instructional source, in which a worker can demonstrate training and education within an area of expertise is critical to advancing one’s career. The challenge becomes how to best earn pertinent credentials in a time effective and affordable manner. 

Career, employment specialists, and economists are suggesting several practices to ease credential acquisition. Kelsey Berkowitz is a Policy Advisor for Third Way’s Economic Program and has looked closely into this issue. Among the suggestions she makes is to: 

  • Increase the amount of credential stacking that is available. In other words, design short-term credential modules that can be combined into larger certifications or degrees. This could provide highly relevant on-demand training while also providing a means for adult workers to achieve higher education goals in more easily managed steps. 
  • Develop more apprenticeship programs. Evidence exists, particularly in Europe, of the effectiveness of industry-based programs that onboard entry-level workers and within a year or two produce trained and credentialed employees committed to the profession. 
  • Recognize prior experiences related to work by offering credit. It is not unusual for individuals to gain skills and insights applicable to their current jobs from events that occurred before being hired. Examples include acquired knowledge from the military, school programs, previous jobs, or other situations where pertinent learning took place. 
  • Streamline onerous licensing mobility. Twenty-five percent of all workers today are in fields requiring a professional license. However, in too many instances licenses are not reciprocal across state lines, creating burdens to reacquire licenses for those pros relocating to a new state. 

The need for instructional and training flexibility will become increasingly necessary in order to keep a nimble and ready workforce. Let us reform learning to better address this imperative. 

A Call to Appreciate the Direct Care Workforce

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Rebecca Bryant, the president and CEO of Lakes Region Community Services, a New Hampshire social services organization, penned an impressive opinion piece in the March 1-14 issue of the New Hampshire Business Review that concretely highlighted the plight of direct support professionals, those who care for the elderly and disabled. To this cohort I would also add childcare workers. 

As a whole, this segment of the New Hampshire workforce is underpaid, under-appreciated, disrespected, and lacking in the placement of esteem they deserve as employees tasked with providing key services to needy populations. 

Why is this? Unfortunately, social services have historically been viewed as somehow less urgent or worthwhile than economic pursuits resulting in manufactured goods and services supporting commercial viability. The money has not flowed to caregivers. Since money appears to be a solid metric of worth and value the unmistakable conclusion drawn is that giving care to young children, old citizens, and the disabled just does not carry that much weight. 

Interesting. Economics is all about the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services to improve lives. How is it that the life improving work of caregivers is different? 

Many would say that the individuals who make up the direct care workforce are generally under-educated with many also coming from low income backgrounds. Thus, the thinking goes they are not meritorious or qualified enough to receive living wage compensation. The time has come for us to stop assuming there is a causal relationship between low valued work and low paid workers in the direct care context. 

We are faced with a contrarian situation of low paid workers toiling through high valued work. Even though low paid direct care services continue to attract, albeit at inadequate levels, those willing to work for low pay in order to do something they like and are good at doing is no reason to continue the practice. It is time right a wrong. 

Let us first look at the root of the problem. Direct care services are historically performed by women. Presumably, they have been drawn to this work, because of the longstanding social and cultural expectations for women to nurture others. It is fair to say that women have performed laudably with direct care services for many years. The benefit to society is immeasurable. 

However, as we know, compensatory equity has been and continues to be elusive for women. “Women’s work” has rarely if ever received reparation on par with what men make. Let’s be honest. Traditional views regarding remuneration says that an occupation primarily composed of women will not be seen as worth paying much for. 

It took men becoming teachers and nurses to spur the evolution of living wages in those fields. Regardless, it should not take a replay of that model to boost the earnings of competent and hardworking direct care service providers, whether female or male. 

There are two reasons for a balancing of resources to occur. Firstly, we should recognize that high quality care directed to those among us who are not or can no longer be high producers is virtuous and enriches lives. This alone should diminish any resistance to fair pay. That said, there is another factor to consider: unequivocal changes already underway to reshape the nature of employment are ushering in a reevaluation of what it means to “work”. 

Many jobs will be refashioned and eliminated as automation and artificial intelligence increasingly impact the economy. Labor directed to personal care may emerge as progressively appreciated employment. A paradigm shift recognition of the value added to society by direct care givers may finally remediate this excessive pay disparity. This transformation in attitude is needed. 

In a state ranked third for the percentage of the population growing old you would think New Hampshire would be intentionally reaching out to strengthen its direct care workforce. We have a chance now to show the country how fair pay for our direct care providers can be accomplished. 

Weaponizing Employment Against the Poor

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Albert Einstein elegantly once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly but expecting different results. This adage comes to mind when we see that yet again work requirements are being used as a bludgeon to combat Americans who live in poverty and who need safety-net programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), HUD housing assistance, and if President Trump has his way, even Medicaid. 

The White House Council of Economic Advisers has recommended work requirements for the most extensive welfare programs and the current administration has mandated that federal agencies alter their presumably lax welfare program standards. These moves are premised on the continuing notion that the poor are a drain on federal resources due to their laziness, recklessness, and lack of ambition. So here we go again, concluding that the poor are so, solely because of their own deficient behavior and must be made to work harder to receive assistance from this government. 

It is not that simple. 

Is this work requirement approach fair that those recipients of aid (excluding children, elderly and disabled) should be made to show an attempt to earn their government supports, which allegedly incentives people to not be poor, or is this a kick to the poor and disenfranchised when they are already down? 

It is worth examining a few of points about welfare work requirements: 

  1. According to the US Census Bureau the 2017 poverty rate was 12.3%, a 0.4% decrease from the year before. Since 2014 the poverty rate has fallen 2.5%. So, if the current trend line is a declining poverty rate why is a harsh condition like work requirements for the poor necessary currently?
  2. This effort was last tried under Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich with their 1996 welfare reform legislation. We have had a couple decades to see how that has gone and studies like those from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and in the book Making Ends Meet (Edin and Lein) show that despite short term marginal improvements in employment they were not sustainable, mostly due to necessary and increased living expenses, absorbing any work generated financial gains.
  3. Where are these jobs that the poor are supposed to get? If you have spent most of your life in poverty, chances are quite low you can pick up a knowledge-economy job quickly. We have all heard how the traditional manual labor jobs are drying up, so what is left? Lousy-waged part-time jobs with unpredictable and changeable hours is what’s left.
  4. If the government feels the need to pick on somebody shouldn’t it be the employers of vast numbers of unskilled and low-skilled who pay their workers, including the working poor, insufficient wages that in turn need to be underwritten by the American taxpayers?

Now one place where there could be political agreement is in the government providing subsidized high quality work training requirements targeted to helping the poor get the knowledge and skills needed for a globalized and digitized economy. Currently, training requirements can be in lieu of work requirements, but their effectiveness remains questionable. 

The causes and cures for poverty are varied, complex, and far beyond the scope of this piece. But if we as a society are truly interested in ameliorating the condition of poverty (as we should be!) we need to be looking for demonstrably beneficial interventions that measurably make positive differences. Requiring the poor to get a low-end job that increases their childcare and transportation costs just to prove they are not milking the system or making them pay unreasonably for a hand-up from those of us with tax paying means is not a humane way to go about it. 

Applying Technology in Hiring

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Human contact, whether through professional networking, social connections, or by earned reputation still matters significantly and should in no way be minimized when describing the recruitment and hiring process. If anything, it is paramount. However, another very important track to cover when developing one’s career is the one driven by existing and emerging technologies meant to streamline and optimize the employment process. 

Today this ranges from online job boards advertising positions to Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) that parse resumes for HR and recruiters. Also, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning tools, designed to assess the employability of candidates, are now present.  

How to advantageously position yourself for these digital aides and gatekeepers needs to be a key component of a well-planned career growth strategy. Let us take a current look at each of these technical features. 

Online job boards are not very new, in short supply, or complicated. They are little more than interactive web sites that post job descriptions from employers. More recent are job search engines like Indeed and Simply Hired that rummage the internet aggregating job postings from a variety of sources. 

These sites are seductive in that they give the appearance of a job store with profuse amounts of positions just ready for you to pick up while shopping. A common and ineffective ploy is to spend hours responding to jobs on the boards with the only thing generated being recruiters trying to lure you to high turnover 100% commission sales jobs.  

Nonetheless, working with job boards is not a complete waste of time and decent jobs can be yielded. Recommended is to spend about 10% to 20% of your job search time utilizing the boards while being careful and discriminating about what you respond to. 

ATS software allows recruiters to organize vast lists of applicants and their pertinent criteria such as qualifications, employment history, degrees earned, etc., which are most useful to hiring managers when determining who to contact for interviews. For those of us trying to secure an interview we need to be mindful of preparing resumes (and LinkedIn Profiles) that are keyword-rich with contextually used terms aligning our skills and knowledge with responsibilities and deliverables mentioned in job descriptions. 

Therefore, given the need for an ATS-friendly resume that simultaneously is attractive for human readers the challenge is to strike a visually appealing format that won’t confuse the ATS. This can be tricky. If you want a designer resume that looks like those on Pinterest, then forget about passing ATS muster. And with so many companies employing ATS the best strategy may be to pay homage to the many conditions needed to not be digitally rejected in a millisecond, while adding enough optics, and of course solid content, to not have your resume look like just another slice of white bread. Achieving this level of resume optimization is a necessary goal. 

The latest trend, which is expected to proliferate in use and sophistication, involves the impact of AI in hiring decision making. There is a growing perception that relying on a candidate’s skills alone is not consistently producing better employees. The evolving thought is to assess personality more with the goal of finding a well-rounded and compatible colleague.  

To this end, AI is being deployed to identify personality traits gleaned from resumes, online profiles, social media presences, video appearances, you name it. Apparently, this is seen as less biased than human observers. We shall see. (Cannot algorithms be biased too?) 

At any rate, developing a consistent brand and value proposition that includes both your technical talents and your work style/interpersonal characteristics across all platforms may be wise for presenting to human and technological appraisers alike. 

Being prepared for the changes and encroachment of technology into hiring decisions, and by extension career development, has become imperative in today’s employment world. 

A Reason for Employment Inequality

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Much is made of the dearth of economic opportunity and income equality across the U.S. workforce. Though a perennial issue, the conventional wisdom these days more than most appears to be that there are segments of the American population for whom high paying jobs are elusive or non-existent. This belief persists despite the lowest unemployment rate we have seen in nearly twenty years. 

The primary reason, we are told, for this situation boils down to the fact that an automated, globalized, and corporate-led economy produces winners and losers — a somewhat different set of winners and losers apparently than the more nationally-based economy of yesteryear. 

Inequality, or even the perception of it, tends to raise the hackles of key constituencies such as left-leaning individuals and nowadays working class folks who find that many low to mid-skilled jobs are evaporating. These groups agree there is a fundamental unfairness to inequality, and they are inspired to fight against it, sometimes in dramatically different ways, whenever possible. 

One element of inequality that I do not see getting too much attention however pertains to the number of people with a college education vs. those without one. As we look over the last half century or so we can see that this is a significant economic phenomenon. Indeed, the discrepancy between those with and without higher education impacts a variety of inequality factors, including not just income, but housing, community makeups, cultural upbringing, socioeconomics, and social status. 

The number of working-aged Americans with college degrees is steadily rising and now is at or slightly above 40% according to the Lumina Foundation. That is ten times the number compared to a hundred plus years ago when Andrew Carnegie, of all people, claimed college was irrelevant and even damaging. Despite the high cost of college, projections are that attendance will continue to grow another 15% by 2025 (Inside Higher Ed). 

Bruce Cain, a Stanford University political scientist, points out that people with knowledge-based characteristics attributed to being college educated, such as professionally oriented behaviors, digital familiarity, an understanding of financial services, and innovative inclinations, tend to congregate residentially and in employment. In today’s world the “Haves” are most often the ones with a college education, and they like to stick with and hire others of their own kind. It is easy to see how this can appear unequal. 

Many Baby Boomers were raised with the notion that getting a college education would lead to greater economic gain. Although the message is more nuanced these days the central point remains the same. One unintended consequence of this virtue is that it also leads to economic inequality and resentment among those not sharing in the bounty. This acrimony can sometimes be heard among those who have taken an anti-intellectual / anti-education stance, such as when expressing skepticism (to put it politely) regarding the viewpoints of the “elites” and the “establishment”. 

Addressing this imbalance requires initially a level of respect and acknowledgement that we all have something of value to offer. Working toward an economic system that honors and tries to achieve an opportunity-for-all ethic could arise from such a belief. Those who benefit from the hard work and commitment of pursuing higher education can assist those for whom college has not been a viable option through assistance measures designed to encourage greater and more affordable college attendance. 

And for those not choosing to pursue higher ed? The means of providing employment training, entrepreneurial support, and apprenticeship alternatives, along with other opportunity options, could be made more available. Full employment across all socioeconomic groups should always be our collective objective. 

Sharing prosperity across all segments of a pluralistic society is a great challenge. Perhaps we need to see more committed action from those who have succeeded, many of whom profess liberal leanings, to drive opportunity-for-all programs so that no one’s economic prospects are left behind. 

Avoiding Employment Burnout

Posted on by Bill Ryan

It is widely agreed that burning out on the job, any job, is anathema to a satisfying professional life. To be clear, by burnout I am not referring to boredom or lack of inspiration with work, but rather the fear-based high anxiety and psychological debilitation that is the result of overly stressful attributes associated with your job. 

There are some broad points to highlight about employment burnout. For starters, it leads to depressed economic activity. Also, it arises following repeatedly demoralizing dynamics that taken together is negative for the individuals involved and for those close to them. Finally, efforts to structure workplaces and assist people in making wise career choices so that burnout does not occur is progressive. 

I suggest approaching the issue by looking at mitigation solutions that can be practiced by both employers and employees. My premise is that employment burnout is transactional, meaning that both parties play significant roles in its emergence, and they can also collaborate to see its demise. 

It is in employers’ interest to not contribute to the burnout of their talent. Employees cost money to recruit, onboard, and train and they provide the productivity skills needed to keep an enterprise profitable. What employees are not is a consumable resource. Yet, this is how they are often treated. Too many workers toil for longer hours with no appreciable boost in compensation. This includes receiving after-hours emails from management. 

A downside for technology is the way it allows for the workday to be extended and therefore the workload to grow. Reasonable limits on work-creep need to be instituted or employers will see their workforce turnover rate increase. 

In addition to management exhausting their labor pool there is the issue of too many employers not showing adequate understanding of what motivates and energizes employees. High compensation and judicious work hours certainly help, but also to be considered are the conditions that feed the career aspirations of workers, and by extension the profits of companies. When management recognizes the synergy between employee career development wishes and how those can best align with company productivity or organizational mission, we create a win/win situation. Such a happy union is not fertile ground for burnout. 

It is easy to pin all the blame on employers for employee burnout. But that is not entirely fair. When a worker goes into a job with their eyes wide open, knows clearly what is required to succeed, and intentionally tries to find the alignment between their own career development needs and employer enrichment they take ownership and responsibility for avoiding their own burnout. 

I recommend that an employee be guided by some fundamental principles when deciding to select and sustain a particular job. One is to always try to put yourself in a context where you are capitalizing on your strengths and managing your weaknesses. Do well what you are best at doing and allocate as little time as possible to handling those aspects of the job you just are not that good at performing. If these priorities are out of balance in your job, burnout is sure to follow. 

Also important is to make sure your job allows for and hopefully encourages you to continually develop your professional skillset; to interact and collaborate with colleagues and partners such that you are contributing optimally given your talent level; and that you leave each work shift feeling as if you are making a significant difference for yourself, your employer, and the world. With these arrangements in place, you are unlikely to feel the drain leading to burnout. 

Jobs, markets, competition, business success, and profitability are all tough to get just right. It can often seem things are beyond our control. But reducing and eradicating employee burnout is a goal employers and employees can achieve together and prosper from mutually. 

Employment Skills Gap or Lack of Fit

Posted on by Bill Ryan

During the Great Recession and ever since we have heard about a skills gap in America. This is in part responsible for slow productivity, and by extension, slow economic growth. There does seem to be evidence of an employment gap. There are currently 6.2 million jobs unfilled, up from 5.6 in 2016 (Forbes); 45% of small businesses cannot find work-ready candidates (National Federation of Independent Business); and the results of a January 2018 survey of 500 senior executives found that 92% think the candidate pool is not as skilled as it needs to be (Adecco). 

There is plenty of finger pointing going on. Some of the principal criticisms include: 

The education system is outdated and is poorly adapted to preparing students for a fluid economy — one that is heavy on technical and math-based skills. 

Employers at both the corporate and small business levels are not allocating adequate resources to training and apprenticeship programs, leaving workforces skill deficient. 

There is a growing cultural bias against the machine and tool-oriented skills useful in construction, manufacturing, and the trades, discouraging younger workers from selecting those careers. 

Increased automation is creating demand for a more technically proficient job candidate than the current labor market can supply. 

Old jobs are becoming obsolete while newly created ones are being generated at a brisk pace which the economy struggles to keep up with. 

Soft skills, such as those which emphasize collaboration, communication, and teamwork are not being acquired sufficiently at home, school, and in the community. 

Job creation is so fast and unemployment so low given the robust economy that labor does not have the time or means to adjust. 

The problem is unmotivated workers who do not want to take menial jobs or work the night shift, or who like their drugs more than work, or who are spoiled youngsters used to having everything handed to them. 

It is likely that all these factors play some role in why there are so many unfilled jobs. One would think this is a simple supply and demand problem to remedy. Identify the specific skills needed by most employers and then have the education and training providers upskill students and workers to learn and master the required competencies. But apparently doing so is not so simple. 

What strikes me in the research on this topic is that there are practically no lists of specific skills that are in short supply. We can find the career areas where there are shortages, for example in nursing, industrial technicians, computer network specialists, and so on, but exactly what the elusive skills are appears to be largely a mystery.  

This suggests to me that there may not be a skills gap at all, but rather a failing in the way individuals are aligned with work for which they are best suited. In other words, there may be a lack of fit between too many workers and employment opportunities. 

This lack of fit problem is not new. Over the past century or so it has been a challenge to match increased numbers of workers with burgeoning career options. Indeed, the career development field arose out of a need to address this issue.  

What is new, perhaps, is the escalating scale and scope of unprecedented numbers of prospective workers and career opportunities. The degree of guidance, counseling, and training by schools, businesses, professional associations, and other stakeholders to better improve aligning available labor with employment demand may need greater attention than has been accessible to date. 

If true full employment is to be achieved, and with it the benefits of economic growth and widely spread prosperity, then it seems it is in everyone’s interest to insist on refining the processes whereby workers can access high quality counseling and training to best meet employment scarcity. Government, education, and business could partner more effectively to forge solutions. 

The gap we are now facing may be more of shared commitment and engagement rather than of skills. 

Reclaiming Civility in the Workplace

Posted on by Bill Ryan

As I pen this piece, during one of the final days of 2017, my mind reflects over the tumultuous year just passed. In my judgment, it has not been a good one. A dominant reason for my opinion has to do with what I see as stark evidence of the deterioration of civil behavior. 

This year exhibited degradation of civility on two fronts. One is the startling revelations in recent months of sexual impropriety in the workplace and beyond that are historic and pervasive. The second, which is relatively new to the scene, is the detestable leadership style being practiced and modeled by the President of the United States. 

The civility downturn issue I raise here elevates to a cultural level, but in keeping with the career and employment theme of these pieces, I’ll confine my thoughts to the effect declining civil discourse and offensive interactions are having and could continue to have in the places where we work. 

To begin, let us contemplate the monumental disclosures and resulting tolerance shift commonly known as the #MeToo movement. Since women increased the pace of sharing professional employment roles in far greater numbers than ever approximately fifty years ago, true workforce equity has been elusive. The combination of rigid gender stereotypes, the inherent inequality of hierarchical structures, and the sexual tension palpable among some co-workers establishes an environment in which predatory behavior occurs. Women who forcefully reject such treatment and men who understand its fundamental unfairness are now letting those in power know enough is enough. 

This social shift is long overdue and compels management across all industries, still mostly occupied by men, to participate and collaborate with female colleagues on equal footing and to dissolve outdated norms. It is hard to imagine that the clock will ever turn back. Managers and co-workers alike are on notice that behavior which violates basic decency against others in a sexual manner could well result in career ending consequences. 

The other and more recent challenge to our declining pattern of civil engagement with potential impact to the workplace is embodied by President Trump. To be clear, I am not interested in scoring political points and my claim here is not intended to be partisan, but Donald Trump’s model for success and leadership is debased, contrary to decency, and a disgraceful example of how those in powerful positions should act. 

The serial lying, bullying provocations, juvenile name calling, lack of intellectual engrossment, and pathetic narcissism represent leadership at its worst. Is there really a political ideology or set of guiding principles so valuable that it justifies these leadership behaviors? Having such a role model speaking on behalf of our nation, occupying a position that influences our youth, and demonstrating that this is what American success now looks like is an embarrassment and affront to our values as a country. 

It is imperative that Americans of moral character and basic virtue rise above the example set by our president and to show the true spirit of civility in the workplace and elsewhere. It can reasonably be argued that as a people over time we have abandoned shared responsibility in a move toward a selfish and a self-centered style of economic individualism. Perhaps President Trump’s mannerisms reflect how far this has gone. 

The year 2017 has given us a wake-up call. We can rally and repair by first admitting some deep-seated flaws exist in the way we interact in the areas of mutual respect and collective caring. The forces against us are formidable. Our positive tendencies are for the time sidelined. Let us not just hope for a better and more civil 2018 but let us actively work toward making it happen. We are better than this. 

Educating for Impending Careers

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Many of us in the United States were educated as children and young adults so that we could succeed both as citizens sustaining our democratic way of life and as productive workers able to sustain ourselves and our families economically. For the most part, the combination of public and private K–12 schools and higher education universities and colleges has served us quite well. We are by and large a well-educated and constructive populace. 

But can we rely on the old-school methodologies to sustain us for a world of work that will be characterized as mercurial and erratic calling for agility, adaptability, and rapid evolution? There is reason to think not. An economy that is experiencing increased speed and transformation will not be well served by an educational structure and model designed to prepare students for a relatively static and predictable work world. 

Let us examine the existing paradigm that traditionally and currently defines most American high schools and colleges. There are two patterns at play based on the concepts of liberal education and career-focused education. By the time a student reaches high school they select or have selected for them one of these persuasions or the other. 

Liberal (or liberal arts) education refers to an approach that encourages a broad and diverse exposure to fundamental and diverse subject matter with the goal being to educate a student for a complex world requiring a variety of perspectives, skills, and areas of knowledge. When and if college is reached, the student fits into this mix a concentrated focus in one or more disciplines. 

A career-focused or vocational path on the other hand focuses much more on preparing the student for a relevant job that is in demand in the workforce. Breadth gives way to depth in that a craft or skillset demonstrably employable is chosen, studied, and eventually mastered by the student. 

To be clear, I am not suggesting that there is anything fundamentally wrong with these models. My concern is in the traditional modes of delivery of the designs. We are still under the assumption that a high school diploma and/or college degree program that terminates upon graduation is enough to provide a student for a lifetime career. It used to be. However, projections are that it will not be enough going forward. 

The workplace and its career needs are becoming increasingly digitized and globalized, resulting in an urgency for malleable, resilient, and entrepreneurial workers to address the ever-vibrant economic demands across the planet. To maintain these attributes workers will need to accept and embrace continuous lifelong learning, upskilling, and training to keep up and stay ahead. Schooling will never end. In fact, it will become an integral and ongoing part of any advantageous job worth having for most people. 

We will likely see a time when liberal and career-focused methods become more of an as-needed hybrid with a greater proliferation of skill and knowledge-based certification and training programs not necessarily tied to slow moving traditional education settings. Students, employees, and educators will begin migrating more intentionally into online, virtual, and yes, brick & mortar learning facilities that offer the highest quality, data driven, short and long-term instruction essential to the requirements of the emerging economy. 

As an educator myself with 31 years in public schools and 5 years as a part time college adjunct I can say with some certainty that this industry will not on its own move in this direction without a lot of resistance. There are many entrenched interests compelled to resist such changes.  

A more responsive and pragmatic instructional delivery will likely arise from a combination of innovative educators and demanding students and employees requiring relevant reactive instruction. We can all begin by getting our heads around the concept of lifelong learning. I predict it will be far more energizing and efficient and much less stuck and draining. 

The Continued Evolution of LinkedIn

Posted on by Bill Ryan

The professional, business, and employment social media online platform LinkedIn is at it again, but in a bigger way this time. As individuals who regularly use LinkedIn to source talent, post jobs, display professional profiles, or network with other users we know that LinkedIn frequently tinkers with the interface to “improve” usability. It has always been a dynamic and growing service and one must assume they are doing something right with $3B+ in annual revenue and 460+ million user accounts worldwide. Not bad for a novel concept that first went live in 2003. 

The latest big set of changes has been rolling out for the past couple of months following the completed acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft in December 2016. Time will tell of course if this will be a good move for both parties. Let us hope this deal does not go the way of doomed Microsoft ventures like Nokia’s handset and aQuantive software. However, given the financial heft and prominent position in the digital services market Microsoft enjoys it is reasonable to expect that this takeover will boost LinkedIn’s standing and influence in the career and employment services space. 

Without getting into the weeds of all the many new minute interaction changes of the website, and there are enough, so that a new learning curve has appeared to get familiar with the site, it nevertheless appears to someone like me that I am increasingly finding LinkedIn to be my digital place to go to work. And I am not alone, Logging into LinkedIn.com is becoming my virtual commute to a real job. 

As in a traditional workplace there are those I work with frequently and closely on a project, those I know remotely, and those I am reaching out to as potential sources of value and opportunity. It is in these areas of taking connectivity among professional people to a more functional, transparent, and far-reaching level where LinkedIn holds great promise. 

The effects of globalization have thankfully become a hotly debated issue politically, but in the world of e-commerce impacted as it is by the powers of social media and crowd sourcing, the players are not waiting around for slow moving governments to set the rules. Global inter-connectivity and commerce is just starting to get ramped-up via international platforms like LinkedIn. It looks like we are heading into a world in which small-scaled and remote outreaches among millions of entrepreneurs, freelancers, microbusinesses, and small businesses across the planet can be exchanged 24/7. 

LinkedIn, and now by extension Microsoft, are betting on this proliferation of e-business, so much so that there is a mission to “economically graph” the world through its site. What does this mean? As Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn’s CEO puts it, they are committed to digitally mapping the global economy by building a profile for every member of the international workforce and for every company in the world. 

Further they intend to digitally list every available job in real refreshed time, list every skill needed to perform those jobs, and identify every school or training facility providing the skill instruction needed to perform these jobs. Facilitating an efficient, timely, and rich flow of information that connects these dots completes the goal. 

Given this infrastructure the potential for enriching current employment, business development, and career needs while also fulfilling the talent requirements for the innumerable jobs of the future seems highly likely. 

An expansive vision of the possibilities e-commerce and e-networking can deliver should be embraced. Many new careers can be made from leveraging a dynamic global economy. Engaging in international business does not any longer have to just be reserved for large multi-national corporations. If one can get a higher quality business or career solution from New Zealand rather than from New Hampshire no matter where in the world one lives, we should expect that to be the new normal and compete appropriately. 

Workforce Shortages and Your Career

Posted on by Bill Ryan

I guess it is a sign of improvement when a new problem can be seen as less egregious than a previously harder to solve problem. For much of the past eight years we have concerned ourselves with getting people back to work — any work. To a large extent that has happened. Unemployment rates and the number of workers who can say they have a job are back to pre-recession levels. So now we have the “luxury” of concentrating on a replacement problem. That is the issue of workforce and labor shortages. 

U.S. employers are struggling to find qualified workers in several fields, resulting in business expansion difficulties and by extension national economic constraints. It does not sound as bad as the employment bounce-back the recession threw at us, and it should not be. However, if left unsolved it could become another factor reducing our global competitiveness and economic growth, spurring calls for talent immigration, automation, and offshoring. 

At an individual level, the college student trying to select a major; the college graduate attempting to launch a career; the established professional looking to make a career transition; and the entrepreneur seeking lucrative opportunities, are among those who may benefit from an analysis of where the workforce shortages currently exist and where employment projections are anticipated. Although such knowledge and considerations are not necessarily paramount determiners of one’s career development, they are worth investigating to see if an alignment exists between these trends and one’s enduring or potential value proposition. 

There are several reasons for the decline in qualified workers with demographics being the big one. The aging of Baby Boomers is naturally leading to more retirements. Domestically, there are not enough replacements for these retirees. Ten years ago, 400,000 workers retired per year . That number has risen to 1.2 million today. 

Also, the older population creates increased demand in fields such as healthcare where more workers are needed than in the past. For example, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and even doctors are already in short supply and are still expected to be in the future. 

However, it is not just in healthcare where shortages exist. To be honest it does not appear that labor deficits are confined to just several industries, but rather that it is a more widespread phenomenon. Even declining industries, such as manufacturing, are experiencing acute scarcities. 

Of course, not having enough workers trained with specific skillsets compounds the problem, but largely it is coming down to some basic math. Our bench is not populated enough to fill the number of vacating positions. 

This should be good news for working-aged people. It suggests there could potentially be many fields and openings to pick from. Other benefits over time should include rising wages and continuously improving working conditions designed to retain talent. 

To best position yourself to take advantage of this general opportunity some other trend lines should be considered. The Bureau of Labor Statistics foresees service sector jobs capturing 95% of newly created positions between now and 2024. Healthcare as mentioned above, and social assistance jobs together will become the largest area of employment, surpassing government and business services jobs. 

Technical occupations will also grow in number and demand will increase looking forward. Automation will eliminate some jobs to be sure, but more likely is that technology will transform jobs that still need a person involved. The energy, transportation, and data analysis sectors are among those in need of technically trained people who can interact with and leverage technology productively. 

I do not want to treat too lightly the menace workforce shortages can have economically and socially. It is a serious issue, especially for some businesses poised to grow and expand. Yet, compared to the recessionary years, I see more opportunity here than threat for the existing workforce. This allows new workforce entries to ensure they are selecting careers that can best fit their skillsets. 

The Growth of Cognitive Careers

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Economies, and by extension careers, reward those human characteristics most in demand. When muscular strength was most in need during times dominated by agriculture and mechanical ability became required to operate and maintain machinery during the industrial age, those abilities were rewarded and revered leading to employment for those possessing such skills. 

The age we have now entered, particularly since the invention of the microprocessor, is one around which cognitive competency or intelligence is highly honored. High paying and stimulating jobs are increasingly going to the smartest among us and there is no end in sight of this trend. 

Historically, there has always been a need for intelligent people, but the correlation between cognitive ability and compensation was never as strong as it is today. One could have been an astute lawyer, financial planner, or mathematician at the turn of the 20th century, but the economy just did not reward those people at the levels that can be done today. We have created a much more complex economy requiring well-informed, inventive, and knowledgeable people who can navigate and derive value from what is for many of us a puzzling network of esoteric information in so many areas. The employment landscape for people with certain kinds of cognitive capacity is flourishing. 

For years we have heard about high unemployment rates and at the same time we have heard there is not enough talent to hire for hard to fill positions. The jobs that are vacant seek individuals with know-how in management, engineering, data analysis, and many other areas where information processing, creativity, and workforce resourcefulness is called for. 

Professionalism is deepening across fields that include medicine/healthcare, law, higher education, the sciences, the military, advanced manufacturing, and finance. Routine and relatively low-skilled operations will not bring competitive advantages to these career categories. Only accelerated thinking will. 

As a result, we are seeing the growth of an educated class. According to the U.S. Census Bureau only 4.6% of the U.S. population had attained bachelor’s degrees or higher in 1940. Today it is 32%. As this educated class continues to earn at relatively robust rates it appears to create an impression of inequality and disenfranchisement, such as we see being exploited in our current presidential election. 

However, meeting the cognitive demands of a more intricate and perplexing economy requires educated people. Blaming success is not enough to improve the lot of us all. Directing one’s individual energies to where the expertise is most needed will. 

The number of us prepared to optimally function in the globalized cognitive economy is not enough if we are to continue being among the world’s leaders in innovation, business, and social transformation. Without relatively easy access to higher education for those with the potential to take the most advantage of this opportunity means we all lose. Let us agree that lifelong learning is essential for each one of us and entry into a college experience that challenges and pushes us to maximize our cerebral capacity benefits us personally and collectively. 

However, the expense of higher education is too high and makes going to college prohibitive for too many Americans. The cost of college has risen too much and too fast. To put this cost hike into perspective the New York Times’ Economix blog shows that since 1985 the cost of general consumer items has jumped 200+%, gasoline prices have risen approximately 300%, and medical care 350%. But college tuition and fees — 575%! Are you kidding me? How is this in our best interests? This destructive level of inflation needs to be controlled. Our long-term economic development relies on it. 

Equality of opportunity is a virtue and should be the basis of much of our public policy. Opportunity is stifled when only the rich can afford to go to college. Opening the doors to higher education invites more participation in cognitive careers and expands the education class to more inclusiveness. 

The Employment Challenge of the White, Blue-Collar Worker

Posted on by Bill Ryan

So, here we are amid the 2016 Presidential race, an election cycle that is likely to go down in American history as one of the most unusual and unpredictable contests ever for selecting our next president. A chief factor contributing to the volatility of this election concerns a rarely seen and powerful reaction coming from a cohort that has been with us for well over a hundred years — the racially white, economically middle class, high school-only educated worker, once commonly referred to as the blue-collar worker. 

The anxiety, fear, uncertainty, and anger of this significant electoral group has shaken up and defined this cycle’s race in a way that most of us, including the political pundits who follow this stuff for a living, did not see coming. This class angst has led to the rapid rise of at least two presidential candidates, who were not expected to be major players when they entered the fray and is driving much of the conversation among all of those still contending for the big prize. 

There are concrete and measurable reasons for the white, blue-collar worker to be apprehensive and they fall across economic, racial/ethnic, demographic, and educational domains. Technology is eliminating many low and mid-skilled jobs. Globalization is increasing competition. Whites are seeing minorities increase in numbers and power sharing. Having less than a college degree puts one at a greater employment disadvantage. When members of this contingent, particularly males, see that their fathers had an easier time achieving the middle class dream than they can, then a deep demoralization sets in. 

A report by two economists that received much attention at the end of last year showed that death rates for white, less-educated Americans aged 45–54 have increased since 1999. Drug/alcohol-related deaths and suicide are propelling this boost. Clearly, something is amiss, and it appears to have reached a breaking point with this election. 

The social and economic causal conditions mentioned are colossal and not reversible. Oversimplified diagnoses coupled with over-promising, which is what presidential candidates largely seem to be offering, will not allay the real fear people are feeling. Strong leadership that empathically acknowledges the discomfort, unease, and confusion people are feeling is a start. But rather than offering unrealistic and bombastic “solutions” it needs to be recognized that as a country we need to rally around outcomes that do not pit one class, race, or ethnic group against another, but instead meet these complex challenges with national resolve. 

In a word, jobs are at the crux of this issue. It is reasonable to ask, what is the white, blue-collar worker with only a high school education to do? To begin answering this I go way back to Aristotle who said that in order to achieve true happiness we must depend on ourselves. Of course, collective action politically and economically is important, but most fundamentally each of must assess on our own the world we are now in and determine for ourselves the best course of action to take for sustainable employment given the daunting headwinds we face. This takes clear, critical, and reflective thinking, resulting in high quality decision making. 

Each of us needs to think of ourselves as an entrepreneur. No, we are not all going to start businesses, but we are going to be approaching our careers similarly by developing, organizing, and managing the enterprise of “myself”. This involves initiative, risk, and when done well, reward. A good entrepreneur finds opportunities from among many distractions, they are innovative when conventional approaches do not work, and they are organized and productive in meeting their goals. Does being like an entrepreneur require a college degree? For many yes, for others no. 

There is a lot of need in the world. We are far from saturating all the actual and potential jobs that are or will be available. Triggering an action with an uncertain outcome is not easy and it is fraught with unpredictability, but our careers depend on it — even for the white, blue-collar worker. 

The Hard Truth About Soft Skills

Posted on by Bill Ryan

As a former schoolteacher I occasionally run into former students, who are now all adults. If time allows, the conversation naturally turns to memories of when we spent time together in a teacher-student relationship many years earlier. 

Over the years I have noticed an unmistakable pattern — what the former student remembers and recalls has nothing to do with lessons taught, curriculum goals, or academic achievement, but rather what I was like and how I treated them as their teacher. In short, their remembrances are rooted in soft skills I demonstrated (or did not), not so much in the pedagogical skills I was working hard to practice. 

Soft skills, a somewhat unfortunate term because it implies to many people weaknesses, is a reference to a vitally important set of personality and emotional attributes that we display daily to those around us. It points to our character traits, style, and habits we exhibit when communicating and interacting with others. Our social reputations are largely comprised by what people think of our manner and individual qualities that are determined by our behaviors and emotional makeups. 

Sure co-workers, when reflecting on each of us, will think of the proficiency or lack of competence we display when doing our jobs, but they will just as much, if not more likely, consider the type of people we are.  Are we kind, considerate, communicative, and in control of our feelings or are we not? Do not underestimate how much that matters in the success of our careers. 

Management knows that a nice guy who does not have much talent to contribute does not bring any more productive value than a highly efficient guy who cannot get along with people. Finding that right balance of hard and soft skills is a crucial challenge for those tasked with employee hiring, appraisal, and retention decisions. So, expect that when interviewing for positions or when it is your time for a performance review to be conducted your personality characteristics will be factored in along with your technical qualifications. 

The set of skills we call “soft” covers a lot of territory, everything from punctuality to empathy. However, there are some critical personality qualities that employers want and need in their employees to build truly high functioning workforces. Having employees with these soft skills can bring a competitive advantage given how many workforces across multiple industries are riddled with workers and managers who are too engaged in dramas, politics, and divisiveness at the expense of cooperative action. 

Among the many soft skills we each should be trying to strengthen here are three that I think may universally advance our careers: 

Adaptability: Given the rapidity with which change is occurring in almost all areas, having a flexible nature implies a willingness to learn and grow to meet demands in new ways when necessary. We will encounter ever more new co-workers as employment becomes more mobile and short-term, so knowing how to accommodate a wider range of people helps our ability to work with them. 

Collaboration: Knowing how to be a team player when times call for such a skill has only grown in importance in recent years. It is not unusual to hear employers say that they are willing to train new hires in the specifics of how to function within a company or workplace culture if they get people who are eager to contribute and know how to get along. 

Conflict Resolution: Clashes and strife of one sort or another are unavoidable, but these instances need not disrupt productivity if co-workers are enlightened enough to understand the value of systematically working out differences. Ever notice how invigorating a relationship with someone can be when you have both struggled with one another and have then mutually resolved your disagreements? 

The good news is that we do not have to be born with soft skills to demonstrate them. They are largely learned behaviors. And since learning never stops there is still time for all of us to enhance our basic interpersonal expertise. 

The State of Careers in New Hampshire

Posted on by Bill Ryan

The 2014 In Review: Recovery report recently released by the New Hampshire Employment Security Department and the Economic and Labor Market Information Bureau is a very detailed and informative analysis of New Hampshire’s post -recession economy.

In addition to being concerned about the economic health of my state as a citizen, I am also intrigued by the report’s implications for the careers of all New Hampshire workers. I have read the report in an attempt to identify some useful indicators in determining the current and future status of career development opportunities for the state’s workforce. What follows are my career-related takeaways from 2014 In Review: Recovery:

There are several labor market-related indicators used to view the economic health of New Hampshire. The ones I think that can be used to derive the desired career information are Unemployment and Current Employment Statistics; Employment by Supersector (broad employment-industry categories); Average Hourly Earnings; Business Employment Dynamics; and Population. When taken together a picture emerges of a state with career promise for many, but within a limited number of industries and a long-term pattern of slow economic growth.

News flash! Unemployment rates rose during the Great Recession! So where are we now? The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for this past March in New Hampshire was 3.9%, which was eighth in the nation. We are essentially tied with Vermont in having the lowest rates in New England. Nationally, the rate in March was 5.5%. Statistically, eighth out of fifty does not sound too bad. Anecdotally, the “Help Wanted” sign are reappearing in business windows state-wide.

This sounds like good news, but if we dig into the data deeper we see some sobering facts. New Hampshire has a shrinking labor force that appears to be influencing the unemployment rate. As an aging state we are experiencing a trend of fewer people participating in the workforce. This fact, combined with low rates of in-migration and limited entrepreneurial expansion, is resulting in slow economic growth. To be sure there are a few bright spots, such as in advanced manufacturing, but this is not translating into being a game changer.

In looking at employment by Supersector we see that the four most robust categories of hiring are in Trade, Transportation, and Utilities; Education and Health Services; Professional and Business Services; and Leisure and Hospitality. Among the hiring laggards are Manufacturing and Construction. When we examine earnings in these Supersectors there have been increases in Education and Health Services and in Trade, Transportation, and Utilities. Pay reductions occurred in Manufacturing and Professional/Business Services. Leisure and Hospitality held steady.

Viewing current hiring in the context of near-term economic and demographic trends, including steady or declining population growth, a low level of in-migration, relative high levels of well-off retiree disposable cash, and a listing as sixth nationally in median household income tells me hiring tendencies are not likely to change dramatically. If you intend to live for a while in New Hampshire, plan your careers accordingly. We do not have an economic climate that is significantly attracting many skilled workers from other states or countries. Therefore, competition for jobs is likely to come from other NH residents.

Taken together, all of this news may suggest that careers oriented toward a graying population, such as in certain types of retail and niche services given this population’s spending capacity, financial management and wealth preservation wishes, leisure and hospitality, and of course healthcare needs should be considered.

Beyond that, Professional and Business Services hiring has recovered well from the recession. New Hampshire businesses still need accountants, HR professionals, operations managers, and technicians among many other business service pros. Career areas to watch out for include those feeling downward pressure from an aging population, such as public school teachers facing declining enrollments and construction workers encountering curtailed building expansion.

A direction that would be encouraging to see turned around is our level of entrepreneurship. More creative ideas and risk-taking on the part of individuals willing to start businesses targeted to improving the lives of New Hampshire residents just might enhance our standard of living and boost economic growth simultaneously. Now there is a career option!