Preparing for the New Workforce Reality
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
My experience in helping employers with their worker development programs for decades has led me to make a generalization that I believe to be true. Many employers have very little idea of how much capacity and value each worker contributes to their organization’s operation. For companies that make critical cost-benefit decisions daily, when it comes to harnessing worker value, what may seem to them as “penny-wise,” more often winds up being “pound-foolish.”
In these organizations you might find poorly written, or no longer job-relevant, job descriptions that shed light on how little is known about each job classification for which they are trying to find new-hires that have the right core skill base. Scratch a little deeper and you might find little in the way of a training strategy or infrastructure to identify and close any gap. Analyze the sum of your findings and you might conclude that this weakness makes it difficult, nearly impossible, to measure and improve individual worker performance – something that, when asked, each employer continues to dream of, but believes they are forced to forego.
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A well-run company might know how many parts an investment in equipment should be able to produce down to the hour or minute. When it comes to the employees that run the equipment, employers admit to knowing very little. They have sketchy, if any, data as to which tasks the employee can perform expertly, which tasks they cannot and which tasks no one ever bothered to train them on. Employers talk about their “investment in their workforce” without fully realizing the importance of that statement.
There are many reasons for this. It was easy for employers to look the other way when business was good and output was generating the returns they expected. Short-term upper management strategies facilitate a myopia by focusing on the bottom line, and not so much on how it was reached or how it can be maintained.
When it comes to staffing, job descriptions, in many cases, are photocopies of a template that somebody created for a job that the writer thought they were familiar with. Because the job title was similar, and the requirements innocuous, it seemed to be “close enough.” Read More
“Realistic Job Previews” Can Be a Useful Tool for Measuring a Prospective Employee’s Transferable Task-based Skills
by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.– Proactive Technologies, Inc.
The hiring process can be difficult for both the employer and the prospective employee. A wrong decision can cost each party a lot of time, money and opportunity. It seems reasonable to believe that some of the “hasty turnover” currently being experienced by employers – new-hires quitting in the first few days of employment – may be due to the shock of discovering the real nature, culture, requirements and environment of the job. An unwanted outcome based on the employer not providing an accurate picture of the job, work environment and work expected to be performed can be avoided with a “Realistic Job Preview.” (“RJP”).
Wikipedia points out that “Empirical research suggests a fairly small effect size, even for properly designed RJPs (d = .12), with estimates that they can improve job survival rates ranging from 3–10%. For large organizations in retail or transportation that do mass hiring and experience new hire turnover above 200% in a large population, a 3–10% difference can translate to significant monetary savings. Some experts (e.g., Roth; Martin, 1996) estimate that RJPs screen out between 15% and 36% of applicants.”
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When RJPs are less effective, “according to researchers there are four issues that challenge RJP:
1. Recruiters do not share RJPs during interviews. (Rynes, 1991)
2. The nature of “realistic” information shared (in lab research or in the field) is unclear (Breaugh & Billings, 1988)
3. Not asking the right questions.
4. Applicants consistently report desiring more specific, job-relevant information than they commonly receive (Barber & Roehling, 1993; Maurer, Howe, & Lee,1992)”
In addition to this there is a chance for realistic job preview to become more effective in order to eliminate turnovers. The presentation format and timing of the RJP can be improved whether the real information is provided early on or later in the recruitment factor. Consequently, more specific topic should be addressed and information sources used (e.g. incumbent subject matter expert currently in the job classification versus human resource staff person).”
RJPs come in many forms; Read More
Decreasing the Cost of Turnover WHILE Increasing Worker Capacity, Work Quality and Compliance…With One Approach!
Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.– Proactive Technologies, Inc.
One of the blowbacks of persistently low compensation (i.e. hourly wage rate plus benefits and opportunity for advancement) is the corresponding high rates of employee turnover. The cost of turnover these days can be burdensome for any organization, and most encountering it express that they would like to minimize it.
In a previous article entitled “The High Cost of Employee Turnover” the causes, the costs and solutions were discussed. A handy way to estimate the cost of turnover to the organization was expressed. The Aspen Institute released a “Cost of Turnover” estimate tool of their own to assign a dollar figure to a firm’s level of turnover, to understand to what degree it is currently impacting operations and to explain to how turnover presents barriers to expansion or market adjustments.
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Organizationally, things can be done to add window dressing that will attract candidates, but only a worker perceiving job stability and income sufficiency will stay away from actively seeking a better opportunity. Additional education and job-specific training opportunities may keep the worker from dwelling on the inadequate compensation for a while, but not adjusting compensation for the earned skills and value can fuel resentment.
One need only to revisit the Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs of college lectures to understand the powerful influence income instability or insufficiency can have on an individual’s decision making. The Crash of 2008 drove most of the workforce to despair from higher tiers down to the fundamental first tier of Maslow’s pyramid. Jobs were lost, homes were lost, dignity and self-worth were stolen and to this day few have felt that they gained that back. Read More
What is So Radical About Workers Asking for a Return of What was Taken From Them? Part 2 of 2
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
In the Part 1 of this article, I reminisced about the better times for workers several decades ago from my own experience as a young man entering the labor force via manufacturing. If you ask others who were around then, or did a little research, you must have found it was not a fantasy, but the life of a normal American middle-class worker.
Manufacturing was seen as a prestigious position, especially among the lower and middle classes. Someone was fortunate to have a job in manufacturing and could expect hard work but a comfortable life.
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Before many employers, especially those listed on Wall Street Exchanges, began to follow neoliberal economics (not to be confused with “liberalism” – which ” is a political and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law“), companies like Hewlett-Packard, IBM, General Electric, as well as their suppliers, were the “gold standard” of employers. Although the steel industry started moving off-shore in the 1970’s, the movement of jobs and decimation of communities seemed to be an isolated occurrence.
Then a series of consequential events set the United States on a path of economic and societal decline for the vast majority of its citizens.
The 1980’s and the War on Labor Unions
The PATCO Air Traffic Controller Strike of 1981 ushered in an unrelenting pattern of legal rulings and legislation that eroded the strength of the labor movement, removing a potent alternative to unprincipled employers. Corporations were emboldened by an infamous 1970 New York Times magazine article in which the Chicago school economist Milton Friedman argued that “businesses’ sole purpose is to generate profit for shareholders. Moreover, he maintained, companies that did adopt “responsible” attitudes would be faced with more binding constraints than companies that did not, rendering them less competitive.”
Supported by right-wing groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council(ALEC), the Heritage Foundation, The Koch Brothers 
and the US Chamber of Commerce, a number of states became “right to work” states, passing laws prohibiting or making it very difficult for labor to organize. Today, 27 states are right to work states, encouraging employers to move their operations there to take advantage of the “pro-business” environment.
According to USA Facts, labor unions declined in strength to 14.3 million, or 10.8%, of US employees in private employment in 2020 – over half of the 20.1% in 1983, when there were 17.7 million employed waged and salaried workers in unions. The number of unionized employees in public sector unions remained relatively constant, at around 35%. Currently there are movements afoot to unionize more of both public and private sector employment, but there are many decades of anti-labor laws in place to overcome. Read More
Read the full January, 2022 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.
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