The fact is, my perspective is colored by the many different hats I wear in my daily life, including being the editor of a publication and Web site that focuses on how to better manage a workforce.
That’s also why I’m probably more attuned than most to drums I hear beating in the workforce jungle, and the message they seem to be signaling to me. And, here’s what I am hearing:
• The first message is that the long and unrelenting recession has pounded into workers a pervasive sense that their jobs, their livelihoods, and perhaps even their lives and well-being are at great risk every day. People everywhere are down, depressed, and many are close to giving up hope, if they haven’t reached that point already.
“Bob Watson feels lucky to have a job,” the story begins. “Lindy Cosme has a job, but not one she went to college for. Ronnie Woodfork has been looking for a job every day and still doesn’t have one. Three Hoosiers with different situations, and all three remain worried about the economy.”
The story says: “Faced with increasing job losses, worries about having enough money for retirement and continued difficulty in paying for basic items such as food, those ages 45 to 64 are one worried group,” according to a survey released this week by AARP. “… The survey, called ‘A Closer Look,’ was last done about eight months ago. The recession’s full effect is now being felt, new findings show.”
“A recent spate of suicides at France Télécom has revealed a paradox at the heart of French society: Even with robust labor protection, workers here see themselves as profoundly insecure, with many complaining about being pushed beyond their limits by the pace of economic change.” The newspaper adds, “What has caught the attention of the French media, public and government is that many of the suicides and more than a dozen failed attempts have been attributed to work-related problems by some experts and labor officials.”
It makes me wonder: If workers are so depressed and tormented that they are kicking up the suicide rate in highly unionized France, what does that mean for us across the pond in America, where we toil in a largely at-will, you-can-be-terminated-tomorrow work environment?
What is this going to take? As I said in my “Last Word” column, I think it’s simpler than most managers think: “More communication from the top would help. So would some sense of when the pay freezes and furloughs might end—even if that’s not right around the corner. And a greater recognition (and appreciation) of the sacrifices everyone is making would help build a sense that ‘We’re all going to get through this together.’ ”
That’s my formula for getting America’s workforce out of the funk it’s in. It’s not particularly complicated, but it begs the question: Where are the business leaders who have the courage to be trailblazers and take the first step? I pray it won’t take too long, because I’m still listening for those drums and that message.
Here’s what I’m talking about: In Barcelona, Spain, a judge has ruled that “insulting your boss with one particularly foul obscenity is not grounds for dismissal,” according to an Associated Press story in the San Francisco Chronicle.
The obscenity in question “translates as ‘son of a bitch’ and was used by a worker against his boss during a January 2008 money dispute in the northeastern city of Gerona. The worker, who also called his boss ‘crazy,’ was promptly fired,” the AP report says.
The worker lost his first court challenge but later won on appeal with the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia. “Without a doubt, both expressions (either calling the boss ‘crazy’ or an ‘SOB’) are insulting,” Judge Sara Maria Pose Vidal said in the ruling, a copy of which was obtained by the AP.
But she noted that when the man called his boss crazy, he had been on his way out of the office and the boss did not hear it. She also wrote that the “son of a bitch” remark “should be viewed in linguistic context.”
Here’s the part of the judge’s ruling that I love: “The social degradation of language has caused the expressions used by the plaintiff to become commonly used in certain settings, especially in arguments,” Pose Vidal wrote, calling the dismissal a disproportionate punishment.
In other words, the Spanish court said that the term “SOB” is common—so common (at least in Spain) that it has passed the point of being considered something that someone should get fired for.
The AP story didn’t say this, but it seems clear that calling your boss a “son of a bitch” is now considered protected workplace speech in Spain. How long before that ruling makes it across the pond and takes root here in America’s workplaces?
My guess, given the rise in so much boorish behavior, is that we’ll see it sooner than anyone cares to imagine.
What can you say about a large, tradition-bound, old-school manufacturing company that decides to shake up its management team by promoting someone with no human resources experience to lead its HR function?
“The retirement of Barclay, 53, who has been vice president of global human resources since 1998, was seen as long overdue,” the story says. “ ‘She is one of the same senior leaders who is responsible for the destruction of the company,’ said Rob Kleinbaum, managing director of auto industry consulting firm Rak & Co. ‘She is responsible for it and should be accountable for it.’ ”
By contrast, here’s a bit about Barra’s HR-free career.
“Barra, 47, is vice president for global manufacturing engineering and has been with GM since 1980,” according to the Workforce Management story. “She has served in a number of engineering, manufacturing, management and communications positions and was plant manager for the Detroit Hamtramck assembly center. Barra was appointed executive director of vehicle manufacturing engineering in 2004 and was named to her current position in 2008, the company said in a release.”
According to auto industry consultant Kleinbaum, appointing an engineer with no HR experience as the department’s head suggests that General Motors is looking to infuse the company and its workforce with a greater sense of the manufacturing principles of continual improvement and operational efficiency.
“It’s a positive sign they want to make deep changes in HR and don’t want to draw from the HR community,” Kleinbaum said in the story.
It depends on how you look at it, of course. Large companies have tried this in the past. We wrote about Wal-Mart’s attempt to do it, without any notable success, back in 2005, but I know of no research that indicates that there is any higher degree of management success for someone with a non-HR background than a more traditional human resources leader.
The question I keep coming back to about this move is this: Does GM’s decision to promote someone from outside HR into the top people management job reflect out-of-the-box thinking, a big slap at traditional HR, or a little of both?
I’m thinking it is more the former than the latter, but only time will tell if this move makes much sense—and if it’s possible to make meaningful change without a grasp of what makes HR tick.
My recent posts on the battle over the union wrangling about “lifetime jobs” at The Boston Globe (see “The Value of a Lifetime Job: Would You Believe It’s $33,000” and, earlier, “Does Anyone Really Think They Have a ‘Job for Life’?”) were based around what I consider to be a pretty obvious premise—that the concept of a “lifetime job” is completely unsustainable in our 2009 economy, and it is reckless to put a lifetime job guarantee ahead of the survival of the business and jobs for everyone else.
That’s why this story in The New York Times this week about lifetime job guarantees in Japan resonated with me. According to statistics released Wednesday, May 20, the Japanese economy in the first quarter suffered its worst contraction since 1955, declining 15.2 percent on an annualized basis. But a far smaller portion of workers have lost their jobs in Japan than in either the U.S. or the European Union (Japan’s unemployment rate in April was 4.8 percent, compared with 8.9 percent in the U.S. and Europe).
And here’s the kicker, according to the Times: “Analysts say this is because lifetime employment is alive and well in Japan, with the state playing a big role in keeping it so.”
The story goes on to point out that “Japan’s obsession with keeping workers employed—even those who are not needed—comes at a cost. Companies slash wages, which reduces consumer spending. Businesses become more reluctant to take on new recruits, shutting young people out of the labor force. And productivity plummets, hurting Japan’s competitiveness in an increasingly aggressive international market.”
A lifetime job was a reasonable notion in my grandfather’s time, but it is completely out of whack in a 21st century economy. It’s a holdover from a long-ago time and about as functional in today’s world as a buggy whip. No wonder Japan’s economy hasn’t been able to ever really recover, and shame on the Boston Newspaper Guild for having the chutzpah to even make this a part of labor negotiations.
As I’ve said before, don’t get me wrong: I love the concept of a “job for life,” but I put that in the same category as buying a ticket in hopes of winning the lottery. It’s a wonderful fantasy, but totally removed from the reality of day-to-day life. If you want proof of that, just take a good hard look at Japan.
Here’s a new economic indicator that is not only easy to grasp, but also speaks both to the strength of the economy and the underlying loss of jobs that fuels so much of the angst that ripples through our national workforce. It’s the Used Cubicle Index, according to a story in the Chicago Tribune.
“Mounds of used office furniture are piling up as businesses close down or cut back, [and] at one Chicago office furniture retailer, the scene looks like a graveyard of downsized and defunct companies,” the Tribune reported. “Rightsize Facility Performance has 700 used chairs, 150 secondhand conference tables and scores of pre-owned file cabinets and cubicles for sale.”
OK, you may be saying, so what if Rightsize is a broker in used office equipment? What does that tell you? Well, here’s what it tells you: “Last year we had access to 30,000 to 40,000 office cubicles across the country,” according to Mason Awtry, Rightsize’s president. “We’re estimating that by the summer we’ll have access to 250,000 cubicles across the country.”
Journalists are known to be a little bit math-challenged, but by my calculations, Rightsize is forecasting a six- to eight-times increase in the number of used cubicles. That’s a lot of cubes, representing a lot of lost workers.
According to the Tribune story, “Rightsize says it is getting about 40 inquiries a day from companies wanting to sell to it, up from eight to 12 previously, and it is increasing total warehouse space by about 25 percent, to 200,000 square feet, to accommodate its $3 million worth of inventory. The deals are too hard to pass up, and Rightsize is betting that eventually the market will turn. For one thing, Awtry says he’s getting some of the furniture at no cost because of the labor Rightsize employs to take it away. ‘In the past, we might have said we will remove the product and give you $20,000,’ Awtry said.” Now, according to the story, Awtry tells customers: “We’ll remove the product.”
Having said that, I like the Used Cubicle Index as an economic indicator that gives a quick and meaningful sense of just what is going on in the workforce. Do you have an indicator that’s just as good—or better? If you do, I’d love to hear about it, in a comment attached to the bottom of this post or sent directly to me at jhollon@workforce.com.
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