Employees Of The Future
With fewer trained graphic arts employees available managers must alter their hiring expectations.
Improving your recruiting and hiring skills is one of the latest managerial challenges. Labor resources are tight and much different than a few years ago. There are fewer trained graphic communications people available than there were five years ago.
During the past 10 years the number of people being trained in our business has declined by approximately 40 to 50 percent. You probably have noticed this. If not, you soon will. There is one plus, however; more of the potential employees are somewhat computer literate.
Depending on which government statistics you read, there are 25 to 27 million people projected to enter the U.S. labor force between 1985 and 2000. These same type of statistics forecast that some 64 to 75 percent of that total will be female. Also predicted is that most of the immigrants over that period and a large percentage of the available labor force will not be of European descent.
What does this mean to you? You soon will have a pool of potential employees that is predominately female and untrained in our industry. Since women remain the primary care providers in our society, they will influence the ways that business and society respond to women's concerns.
Additionally, the entire U.S. population is getting older. As employees age, so do their parents. As the number of persons over 65 increases, businesses will feel the effect of an employee's devotion to parents over careers.
You may have to start recruiting/hiring more untrained people who may lack basic education. In addition, here are some other groups from which you may draw future employees:
• Immigrants. You may have to teach them English, but many are well educated and have a great work ethic.
• Older workers who are possibly already trained. They also usually have a superior work ethic.
• Handicapped people. There are very few jobs in a graphic communications operation that a handicapped person cannot do. Every handicapped person I ever employed exceeded our productivity expectations.
• Part-time workers. There are still many persons who wish to work an extra three to four hours a day and/or an occasional weekend/holiday. Some of these people are already trained.
• Ex-convicts. While nobody is eager to hire a habitual criminal, many ex-cons are repentant first-time offenders who can be good employees.
Changes in Recruiting Techniques
In addition to the usual ways of recruiting, you and your human resources department may have to use job advertisements in weekly and other special newspapers, such as those aimed at local ethnic enclaves. These ads will have to be more explicit about the job, the work environment and the benefits/incentives offered.
You might also try job fairs in neighborhoods; ads on non-English radio/television; posters in senior citizen centers, buses, taxicabs, grocery stores and fast food outlets; or contacting parole officers and agencies providing services to the handicapped.
Other ideas are to offer money or other incentives to current employees for recruiting new workers; raising the base pay of each employee; or hiring part-time help with the idea of offering them full-time work if their abilities, skills and attitudes are satisfactory.
Flexibility Goes A Long Way
You probably should change operating procedures to attract and retain employees. These changes might help families with children and/or older persons in their care. Here are some things to consider that do not cost much but would mean a lot to your employees. You should stress that the work must still get done in a quality manner, on time and on or under budget.
• Let employees swap time periods with one another to better accommodate their needs. (Proper security has to be provided for all people before, during and after all working hours on the property of the organization, as well as at the nearest bus or taxi stop.)
• Let two part-time employees share a job, with one working mornings and the other working afternoons.
• Offer an extended lunch period so appointments that cannot be made on weekends can be met.
• Get the parent organization to encourage and give incentives to its older workers to get them not to retire or to interest them in part-time work.
• Introduce flexible time.
• Introduce a compressed workweek with an employee working four 10-hour days instead of five 8-hour days.
• Have weekend shifts with the individual taking off two other days during the week.
• Change vacation rules so a person can take vacation by the hour.
• Make it easier for a person to take a short leave-of-absence to handle family problems.
• Help employees who wish to establish a network of temporary/emergency babysitters and/or eldersitters.
• Certain jobs, like keying, writing or designing, can be done at home.
• Reduce staff and give more overtime to current staff. Their spouses can then work less or not at all.
• Reliable transportation is a major roadblock to many employees. Persuade your parent organization to arrange practical schedules and possible fare discounts with the local bus company. Or arrange car or van pools.
• Ask current employees what changes, additions or deletions of work rules, procedures, operations and/or equipment will help meet the goals of the parent organization.
The Next Step
Discuss the recruiting problem with your boss and your human resources/personnel department. If nothing or little is going to be done, suggest that you prepare some ideas for consideration or that a small committee be formed with you as the chairperson to develop some guidelines.
If this is not acceptable, ask that management be prepared to review some suggested revisions of operating policies for your group. Under any of these scenarios begin to prepare plans to help the employees in your group and others in the parent organization meet their family responsibilities.
To utilize this new less-trained work force, you must implement continuous training programs right now. Train each employee, including these new hires, in as many operations as that person can handle.
Use the longer-employed and better-trained staff as mentors to the new staff. This enriches the current staff's jobs and helps develop a spirit of teamwork in the group.
When training, first establish goals, then regularly check on your progress in meeting those goals. Regular discussions between you, the mentor and the trainee greatly add to the progress in meeting these goals. The payoff for your group includes efficient training, enhanced productivity and better customer service.
Consider several different types of training techniques depending on individual needs of each new employee. Weigh the merits of on-the-job training, job rotation, classroom sessions, correspondence courses and vendor training.
Attention To Diversity
Because of the diverse ethnic backgrounds of your employees, it will be important to teach employees to respect one another. Sharing and championing the employees' cultural similarities and differences must be an ongoing activity. Meet in small groups and lead discussions about how the goals of the parent organization, the in-house group and the individual mesh.
Other ideas:
• Hold social events that bring employees into contact with one another.
• Communicate with the in-house group regularly about how their efforts are helping the parent organization reach its goals.
• Assign different teams of employees jobs that require cooperation and support of each other.
• Find ways to weekly publicly praise and thank employees for jobs well done. When doing this make sure all persons receive acknowledgement.
• Solicit the human resources department for guidance that will assist the in-house group with team building.
To avoid extensive technical training for new hires, you might look at getting new equipment. It will cost money, but newer equipment requires much less skill to operate than previous models.
You cannot change the demographics of the available pool of possible employees, but you can be prepared to meet the challenge of change. Hopefully the ideas presented in this article will help you respond positively to some of these changes. IPG
- Places:
- U.S.