Electronic House Call - September 13, 2002

ELECTRONIC HOUSE CALL - September 13, 2002

After about six weeks at home (no, I didn't get the office shoveled out!) the travel starts again next week -- a quick trip to Las Vegas to talk with the franchisees of a regional restaurant chain about the importance of their brand ... and how to protect and grow it.

GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS
My good friend, Roger Herman, is a futurist with a global practice. Recently he offered a disturbing observation

The Good News
The economy will heat up again soon. Open jobs will be filled and more will be created. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that we will have 167,754,000 jobs in the employment market in 2010, just seven short years away.

The Bad News
At the same time, we will only have 157,721,000 people in the labor market -- a shortage of 10,033,000 workers! These figures don't even take skill needs into consideration, just raw numbers of workers. This decade will make the tight labor market of the late 1990s look like a practice session.

Roger predicts that, "we will experience a severe labor shortage in the United States from late 2002 until at least 2010. Very few people understand the enormity of this challenge. Business owners will not be able to solve their problems by raising their bids for talent. They must fundamentally change the way they do business."

[Even now, when] unemployment rates are high and people are out of work, employers have difficulty filling jobs. (What's wrong with this picture?) While we have high unemployment, many employers are unable to hire competent people to work for them. Some of this may be due to workers not knowing about the jobs (or not wanting to do them) but some of can also be traced to employers being more picky about who they hire. Remembering the difficulties they had with incompetent workers during the tight labor market, they want to hire high quality applicants.

Higher selectivity by employers means that people who learned to be mediocre are now suffering the consequences. Many workers did learn mediocrity -- taught by bosses who accepted a "get-by" attitude. These employees must now acquire new attitudes somehow, especially if they expect to work for employers who hire for attitude and train for aptitude.

The years ahead will be interesting, as employers become more selective, yet need more people to work. Competition for top talent will increase; employers will have to invest heavily in training and counseling.

A note from the Doc:
Are you guilty of accepting a "get-by" attitude from your present crew? What are you doing NOW to make sure your staff is well-trained and fiercely loyal ... or will you just wait for them to jump ship when a better offer comes along? ... and it surely will! BTW, when that better offer comes, we are likely to be back in the serious labor shortage that Roger predicts and you may not be able to replace them. Good times won't do you much good if you can't staff the place. The best defense is a good offense.

(I am hoping to interview Roger for the Management Insight Series very soon. You can subscribe to Roger's Trend Alert at www.hermangroup.com/trend_alert_signup.html. It's free!)

EARLY REGISTRATION DEADLINE IS TODAY
The early registration deadline for The Odd Couple Restaurant Sales-Building Workshops in North Carolina is today. Register before midnight and save $50.00. The Odd Couple will be in Charlotte and Greensboro on the 23rd and 24th, in Milwaukee on October 16, Eau Claire on October 17, and three dates in South Carolina in early November. For more information, go to www.oddcouple.net.

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