CareerXroads Colloquium™ Bellwether - April 07

Blurring the Lines of Recruitment Advertising Services, March 21, Monster.com Corporate Announcement

Monster announced the availability of the Monster Career Ad Network, a recruitment media product designed to assist employers in choosing and posting their jobs to job boards other than Monster (and presumably to print products as well).

Major recruitment advertising agencies are finding themselves increasingly in competition with the very media they recommend. The agencies, the various media and the specialty tools like eQuest however ALL have deeply embedded conflicts of interest influencing their recommendations.

Career Advice May Be A Perk You Cannot Refuse, March 22, Workforce.com

An announcement that Bernadette Kenny was appointed as the "chief career officer," a newly created position at Adecco's North American operations, is the latest signal in a growing trend. The position was “designed to provide leadership and guidance on workforce retention, development and recruitment.”

This is more evidence - a growing mountain of evidence - that career management services will be an essential component in retention for highly competitive corporations. Firms will have to get over the internal versus external conundrum however i.e. to keep your best talent you may need to risk helping them choose to leave.

How Many Children Are Needed to Support Mom and Dad in Retirement? March 22, N YTimes

The number of retirees in China will double between 2005 and 2015 and there may be consequences according to the March 22 NYTimes article, China Scrambles for Stability as Its Workers Age. The article pointed out that China’s mandatory retirement policy is 60 for men (55 for women was not mentioned). Added to the mix however is that China’s one-family, one-child policy, which began in 1978, could mean that many new retirees will have only a single child to care for them into their old age.

Culturally, demographically and financially, something will have to give.

An early entry for the 2007 Totally Clueless award goes to
Reuters for its insightful(?) article earlier this month that Global warming may be bad for asthma sufferers, March 23, Reuters

In an incredibly intuitive leap, the journalist assigned to this stretch effort opined that global warming will increase the number of asthma sufferers putting a strain on medical services.

Give me a break. As serious as asthma is, just imagine you are among the 3000 permanently displaced families on various south seas islands who have already seen their islands disappear under rising waters. If you were only worried about medical service availability you would still be treading water. Worse case scenarios have .25 billion displaced people in coming decades. Articles like this make light of the necessary contingency/disaster planning that each firm should be working on.

According to MSNBC, global firms are telling top managers to work less Hmmm. And the award for most humorous article goes to, March 20, MSNBC

MSNBC supports its notion by quoting a global study in the Harvard Business Review (that) “showed more than 50 percent of male executives and more than 80 percent of women executives working 60 hours a week or more said they would not be able to keep it up for more than a year. Women tend to quit such jobs after a few years, the study shows. Men often stay but more than 40 percent who worked those hours experienced “brown-out” within five years and had lost their creative zeal.

We think the study’s authors were working overtime on this one. When we see executives sunning themselves w/o cell, crackberry or retinue maybe then we’ll pay attention. Until then we suspect there are still enough “executives” addicted to long work hours and willing to throw themselves on the sword of 24/7 to replace the burnouts. It’s the next (US) generation who won’t even bother opting in to work for multinationals in the first place that are the problem- the sons and daughters of workaholics tend to grow up saying “not me!”

Vacation Policy at Netflix: Take as Much as You Want, March 22, San Jose Mercury News

“When it comes to vacation, Netflix has a simple policy: Take as much as you'd like. Just make sure your work is done. Employees at the online movie retailer often leave for three, four, even five weeks at a time and never clock in or out. Vacation limits and face- time requirements, says Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings, are "a relic of the industrial age."

While few firms (or even their employees) can get their arms around all the implications of a true performance-based culture, 24/7 communication connections and online collaborative work applications will eventually impact work design and change the staffing value proposition. How hard would it be to find qualified takers for a position that is self- paced, anywhere, anytime? Possibly an antidote for those 60 hours at the office plus commute time.

HR At the Table, SHRM

The Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) and Harvard Business School Publishing (HBSP) are collaborating to produce a program entitled The Executive HR Network. HR leaders, as well as executives from top global companies, will be invited this year to events in Dallas, San Francisco, Boston and Washington with leading researchers from Harvard, Yale, USC’s Marshall School of Business, London Business School, and other institutions to engage in intensive, interactive discussions of emerging trends and best practices.

We think it is critical to focus on what HR does right if the profession is to gain any traction in the boardroom and programs like this raise all boats and connect leaders who get it.

HR Organizations Form United Front on Immigration Reform, March 7, HR Initiative for a Legal Workforce

On Wednesday, March 7, five groups launched the HR Initiative for a Legal Workforce, a $1 million dollar campaign designed to educate lawmakers about employer aspects of immigration reform. The lobbying effort involves the Society for Human Resource Management, the HR Policy Association, the American Council on International Personnel, the International Public Management Association for Human Resources and the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources.

It's about time.