Visions from an HR Futurist

This is Roger Herman, Strategic Business Futurist, concentrating on workforce and workplace trends. I'm also a specialist in employee retention, which we see as one of the most critical strategies for employers to use in the years ahead. I'd like to share with you some things that we see coming, things that we see that are going to be affecting the way you do business.

First of all, we know that the economy is picking up.
We know it's coming, we see the numbers, we're watching it carefully. The difficulty is that we don't know what the timing will be. Many of us that are looking at the trends and forecasting economic movement, and the implications of that economic movement are anticipating perhaps a hockey stick kind of a graph where things will just be moving along in a relatively low level, and then suddenly spring in to a much higher level of activity which will definitely shake up the market, shake up the economic market and shake up the employment market. The challenge is going to be understanding when it's coming, how to plan for it and how to work with it.

We know that the key today is that companies need to be involved with strategic planning, contingency planning and flexible staffing. The improving economy is going to stimulate quite a bit of movement, then what we would describe as a turbulence in the employment market. Recent research suggests that at least 30-40 percent of today's workers are ready to change jobs, but very few employers are really taking defensive or even offensive measures to respond to this. Employees are ready to jump, employers unfortunately are complacent. What we're looking at is more and more people being receptive to offers from other employers, and as those offers come in, people are going to leave. First it will be the A players, then the B players and then employers will be stuck with the C players and the D players, the people they shouldn't have hired to begin with, but have held on to.

We are currently facing the most severe shortage of skilled labor in history.
We are moving into a period where we are going to have more jobs being created because of this economic growth, more jobs that will require skilled workers. Fast moving technology, inadequate education and skill mismatch have created a whole group of mismatched people, of obsolete workers, people that just don't fit for the kind of jobs that are available today, and that's going to create a serious incapacity for us. That incapacity is going to be very challenging for employers, they just will not be able to find the people qualified to get the jobs done.

So, what do we do?
This is the time for strategic workforce thinking and action. Protect your assets. Employee retention will be the vital strategy. Reenergize your current workforce. This means re-recruiting. Talk to your people. See who they are. Learn why they work for you. What are their objectives in their careers and how does this fit for where your organization is going? A lot of people just join a company and just stay there until something better comes along. This is your opportunity to show them that something better is right there where they are.

A third recommendation is to evaluate the current and future needs for staffing including your transition period, what will your needs be 2, 3, 4, 5 years down the road. How are you going to get there? What kinds of people are you going to need? Where are you going to find them?

Now is the time to build the bench strength for the future. Identify those people that you want to bring on board, maybe not right away, maybe in three months, maybe in three years, but build the relationships with them now, so that when you're ready, they'll be ready. If you build this bench strength now, you'll reduce your time to fill, and keep yourself in a position where it will cost you less to maintain a stable, productive workforce when and where you need those people to be to get the job done.

Fifth, initiate focus training and development to prepare for the future. Work with the people that you have now, plus the people that you have coming on board to build their skills, to build their competencies, to build their understanding, to build their connection with your organization so that as you move into the future, the people on your team will be better and better and better, stronger and stronger and stronger, to get the job done for your organization.

It's critical to get top leaders on board. If your top leaders are not on board and not demonstrating their leadership by addressing deficiencies in the organization, assuring that education is being provided, stimulating, guiding and encouraging other people, then you're going to have a problem. This means that you may have to get more involved in educating, stimulating, guiding, and engaging your leaders so that they can get the job done for you.

Address your competency deficit. Where are your holes? How will you fill them? When? How? How much are you going to risk in the meantime when you have those deficiencies? Now is the time to begin to design and implement a process of moving everybody in your organization to his or her highest potential. None of us is working to our full potential, including you, including me. What do we need to do to move to a higher level of performance?

Those are the kinds of things we need to focus on now as we move into this exciting, stimulating and turbulent period in the employment market. Become strategically and tactically aggressive now, or risk being trampled by the competition.

A look at the external workforce environment tells us that things are already starting to change. The shift is already moving toward a seller's market. Now is the time to become much more involved with these kinds of things that we've sort of taken for granted over the past few years.

In summary, assess your situation.
See just where you are today. Identify the keepers, the A players, the B players, and then start doing all the different kinds of things that we recommend and that others recommend to keep those good people. My book, Keeping Good People will give you all kinds of ideas, and there are others books that I have written that you'll see on the website that will give you even more insight into what you can do to keep those A players and B players. Identify the C players. Build them, or discard them. Your choice is to bring them up to speed or give them a creative career redirection opportunity, period. D players, bye bye. You can no longer afford to keep players on board who are not going to have the potential to be part of your future workforce. You just don't have time, room or resources to support them. Second, evaluate your future needs. Your people needs and your skill needs. It's more than just having a number of people. It's having the right people, in the right place, at the right time, with the right skills, with the right attitude and the right leadership to get the job done. And then, third, build toward the future. Future think, future plan, future act. It's not about just today, it's about tomorrow, and tomorrow starts now.