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The demographic
dearth of younger workers will cause a 10,000,000 worker shortfall
in the United States by 2010. Few corporate leaders are
aware of the impact of this on their companies, and fewer still
are strategically focussing on doing something about it.
Book Review
© Dr. Terry J. van der Werff, CMC
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This is an important book, addressed to corporate
executives who alone have the organizational clout to deal with its
message. Drawing on their collective decades of workforce research,
the authors make a potent case for a strategic approach to human resources,
which affects everything a company does.
For the better part of a decade in virtually every
presentation I have given on global trends at conferences and corporate
retreats, I have warned of the severe shortfall in the number of younger
workers, persisting until about 2020. In Impending Crisis
my close friends Roger Herman and Joyce Gioia and their co-author Tom
Olivo lay bare the hard details of this crisis, one the United States
has not experienced for at least a century, if ever. Frankly,
this crisis is not "impending;" it's already upon us!
The book begins with the assertion, "Employers,
particularly in the United States, are in serious trouble and few realize
it. A dangerous worker shortage, more severe than most people
expect, is compounded by deep systems problems in the way companies
operate today." The authors pull no punches and relentlessly buttress
their case with data, case studies, and projections. They are,
in my view, entirely correct in trying to wake up the corporate world
and to tell them not only what's wrong, but also how to fix it, noting
"in the long run the most profitable companies are those that take care
of their people."
You may be preparing yourself for a tome of data,
tables, and mind numbing text with such a focus. Fear not, the
prose is engagingly, though aggressively, written.
How severe is this crisis? Using recent Bureau of
Labor Statistics projections, there will be a shortfall of over ten
million workers by 2010, compounded by insufficient knowledge and skills
in those workers that are available. I trust the authors used
these statistics well, but too much of their argument is based on them
for me to rely solely on trust. It would, therefore, been preferable
to have some overview of what the BLS projected and how, see some of
the underlying data, and be led by the authors to the appropriate conclusions.
It was quite helpful and quite scary (with an aging
population) to have a substantial analysis on the health care industry,
which the authors contend is a harbinger of other industries in the
next three to five years.
The bottom line is for you to add value to your
workforce, and this focus on value must start from the top, especially
with the CEO, CFO, and CHRO (chief human resources officer). There
is no substitute for leadership, and the authors discuss several "best
practices," grouped into four main areas (with explanations of each
practice):
Leadership practices: Values; vision
and planning; accountability & learning.
Management practices: Coaching and mentoring;
feedback; communication & flexibility and collaboration.
Business practices: Engagement; rewards
and recognition; recruitment and retention & process effectiveness.
External practices: Customer focus; marketplace
awareness; supply chain management & climate versatility.
As good as it is, this book is not without its faults.
Saying this, however, is not to recommend avoiding Impending Crisis.
Far from it. You will experience the impending crisis and absorb
its full implications. You will be forced to think deeply on how
these will affect your company.
In any writing, a certain degree of redundancy is
necessary to tie the book's themes together and to reinforce the concepts.
However, I couldn't help but think a sharp editor's pencil - trimming
20% of the verbiage - would have improved the book and given it even
punch. Further, far too many of the figures were unclear, cluttered,
and located pages away from the text discussing them.
I have no quarrel with the authors' prescriptions.
Indeed, the authors are on target and their prescriptions are too.
My biggest concern is the authors say precious little about some obvious
"solutions" to the workforce shortfall, namely, immigration; global
outsourcing of jobs; and technological supplements to human activity.
These and other solutions should be examined and put into the context
the authors put into place. Perhaps this is their next book.
I hope so.
I'll end where I began: this is an important
book. If you have all the skilled workers you need to grow your
business, rejoice. If not, digest this book and apply its lessons.
