Full disclosure – I’m no economist. You wouldn’t have to know me long to realize that fact. However, our local Pioneer Press offers a quick read business article with a potpourri of short articles – Labor could reap rewards of political shifts.

From the 1st story:

Political shifts in the U.S., Europe and Asia increase the chances that 2007 will bring labor higher pay and stronger job protection after five years in which its share of economic gains fell….Wages in the dozen nations sharing the euro barely shifted last year even as the region, which expanded last week to include Slovenia, enjoyed its strongest growth in six years. “Economic data is so good that employees must have a share in the success they’ve helped to bring about,” says Juergen Peters, head of IG Metall, Germany’s largest labor union.

And the next story in the same article:

Employers are spending much more on employee benefits than they used to.A study released Wednesday by the nonprofit Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington, D.C., found that of the $7 trillion employers spent on workers in 2005, 80.6 percent went to wages and salaries and 19.4 percent went to benefits.

In 1960, wages and salaries accounted for about 92 percent of employer spending for total compensation, EBRI said.

I wonder if Mr. Peters (from the first story) has taken an account of the exploding healthcare costs that businesses are absorbing for their “workers.” I guess the pay-for-performance model is thoroughly engrained in my psyche. I don’t see unions being eager to take a significant pay cut when the company is struggling. Funny that the editor chose to sequence the two stories this way. Perhaps it was an oversight? Or perhaps not. Either way, the article does close with a humorous story:

Sharper Image said its recently departed founder and CEO Richard Thalheimer agreed to pay the company $10,000 to keep two of his office decorations sculptures of Superman and “Star Wars” character C-3PO. The specialty retailer said all future management hires would be done under a strict policy of “no mega-dorks.”

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From abcnews.com – How to Have More Fun at Work. This topic is going to become more common as Gen X ascends and Gen Y populates the workforce. Already we are seeing numerous articles on work/life balance enter the article sphere.

I’ve worked for many Boomer managers who were suit-and-tie, get your work done leaders with no time for, well, fun at the office. At one technology employer, we had a dartboard and ping pong table in the lunchroom that was a huge hit. In the sales department, we would take a 15 minute afternoon break to go trash-talk each other while competing like we were in the Olympics. To this day, I remember how enjoyable those competitions were. Afterwards, we would get back to work almost invigorated from the mini battle.

Now for a strange aside. When my son was in preschool years ago, the teacher explained that children learn better when they have large-muscle activity before a seated learning time. I don’t know if that is true of adults or not, but as I mentioned, I always felt invigorated after a game of ping pong. I had more energy and was more “alive” on my phone calls.

Yet there is a downside to offering this type of fun at the office. The word came down from the Boomer management team that salespeople should not be playing ping pong at any time during the day. Mind you, no other departments received a similar dictate, just sales. After that, every time we went to get a coffee or snack, we would see others enjoying a part of the corporate culture that was forbidden to us. That rule created much angst and resentment between the sales team and the managers.

My point is simple, if you are going to commit to a culture of fun, make sure you set parameters at the beginning and make it accessible to all employees. And remember, the opportunity for employees to have some fun will go miles to improving morale and hopefully retention.

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If you have read The Hire Sense for any length of time, you know that we are consistently reading sales employment ads looking for strong formats. Unfortunately, the majority of our reading reveals poorly constructed ads. I personally believe these ads are the starting point for companies who end up criticizing online job boards.

They pay the exorbitant fee to place the lousy ad and then receive a lousy response. Their defense mechanism is simple – the online boards are an unproductive waste of resources. As I’ve stated before, if you don’t catch any fish in a lake renowned for good fishing, it doesn’t mean the lake is inferior. The first place to look is at your bait.

I give you this long lead-in due to the ad I just read. It starts out with this bullet (I edited the ad by inserting widget):

Must have at least 10 years of prior experience in selling widget-related products to OEM widget engineers and / or widget distributors

The questions that always enter my mind when I see this statement in an ad:

• Is 10 years the magic threshold for sales success in this position?
• What if the candidate has had 10 years of mediocre success in the industry?
• If a salesperson has 10 years of experience and verifiable success in this industry, why would they want to leave their current employer and potentially risk their established customer base?

I could keep going with the questions, but you get the point. The ad spirals downward from the opening bullet. There is not a single word describing the skills and talent needed for success in the role. There is an entire paragraph copied and pasted from the marketing materials that describes their company’s products. Now, they may find the right salesperson, but it won’t be because of their ad. My hunch is that they will settle for recycling mediocrity by hiring the candidate with the most experience in their industry . . . but not necessarily the candidate with the best skills and talent for their position.

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It has been a while since we have done this Monday thing so here is something amusing to start your week. CareerJournal.com offers Drinking on the Clock Is OK for This Position.

Opening graph:

If drinking beer on the clock and traveling to Oktoberfest in Munich on the company dime sounds like a dream job, there are still nine days left to apply for the newly created post of chief beer officer at the Four Points by Sheraton hotel chain.

I’ve been to Munich but not during Oktoberfest. I have also stayed at a handful of Four Points by Sheraton hotels. If they hire based on experience, I can probably land this job.

But there is competition . . . lots of competition:

By yesterday, officials at Four Points’s parent company, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., had received more than 5,500 applications from beer lovers in 31 countries. In addition, scores of current Starwood employees have signaled their interest in the part-time job that comes with no salary, but plenty of perks.

“No salary, but plenty of perks.” I love that line. Try dropping that into your next sales employment ad and see what type of response you get. I doubt you would see 5,500 resumes.

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