Here’s a news story from the day before yesterday. “Members of the U.S. Congress begin 2010 scrambling to reduce the double-digit U.S. jobless rate, knowing their own jobs will be at stake in the November election if they fail to deliver.”
We’ve been waiting around for a year to see what job stimulus efforts “they” would put into the works once the big financial guys got stabilized using our tax money. So, maybe “they” are finally going to get moving.
But what about us? I mean all of us in Human Resources. If we don’t collectively understand what it takes to create jobs that advance business goals, build skills, give people job satisfaction as well as compensation and benefits, who else does?
I know this is Episode #3 of a couple of episodes on smart, nuts and bolts kinds of things to do during first Quarter. More than ever before, I wish I had a “to do list” that I could share with you (along with a magic wand) so we could just get started on job creation together.
But like anything else, I know we’ve got to start by facing facts. Most of our companies have laid off employees in the last 18 months. Some may still need to. How can we even consider job creation if we are still limping along? Where’s the money going to come from?
These are all good points, but I think we better get creative pretty quickly, or we’re going to get too used to moving slowly. Making do instead of making news.
HR may not have decisive financial power in our organizations, but we do have growing influence. Leadership is increasingly looking to HR for insight into the people aspects of knotty business issues.
What’s the main rule of brainstorming? Just get those ideas out on the table – no criticism, no analysis. Pile them up until you’ve got so many, you can hear what they are saying to you.
So here goes. These are really blue sky, wishful thinking, and the only place I could figure out to start.
- Identify the departments or divisions where real innovation is planned in your company. Meet with their leadership to talk over their wish list of talent.
- Analyze your company’s jobs to see which ones would be amenable to alternative staffing models. If your company hasn’t in the past, can you introduce job sharing, telecommuting or contract positions that may put more people back to work, even if it is not full time?
- Question the necessity of sending jobs overseas or see if you can get some of them back into the U.S. Analyze whether you really are saving money with those overseas jobs, in spite of the training involved. Instead of thinking it’s them or us, analysis may indicate that some portion of the work can be done just as cost-effectively within the U.S.
- Build a coalition among the HR professional organizations in your city or region. Plan a conference or even just a meeting on this topic. Even if nothing can be done immediately in your company, you may have ideas that could help elsewhere.
Jump in at any time with your own suggestions, hopes, wishes, case studies, research, and, and, and. It would be great if you would share your ideas in the comments section, so we could get a conversation going. Surely you have your own opinions or worries about this?
Better yet, just try this in your own department. Challenge the status quo. Behind closed doors, gather up your colleagues for a January in-house retreat. See how creative you can be with ideas – both for job creation and for engaging leadership in your dialogue. Then determine which of your ideas can make a difference and get started.
If not now, when?
Margaret O’Hanlon is founder and principal of re:Think Consulting. She has decades of experience teaming up with clients to ensure great Human Resource ideas deliver valuable business results. Margaret brings deep expertise in total rewards communication to the dialogue at the Café; before founding re:Think Consulting, she was a Principal in Total Rewards Communications with Towers Perrin. Margaret earned her M.S. and Ed.S. in Instructional Technology at Indiana University. Creative writing is one of her outside passions.
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