According to a Workforce Management article the buzz at the SHRM conference inolved rising gas prices and the wide-ranging effects it is having.  In fact, the conference’s opening press event highlighted its recent poll showing how companies are trying to assist their workers.  The two most noted solutions were flexible schedules and telecommuting.  Some of the other ways they are helping are four-day weeks, gas cards and car-pooling.

John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas made a great comment (my bold):

These are more than short-term fixes, Challenger says. They are the beginning of a revolution in the office that will result in productivity being the central value of work, rather the number of hours logged by employees. They also dovetail with other trends like globalization and a 24-hour view of the workday that accommodates all time zones—Asia, Europe and the United States.

“The idea of a set workday or a five-day workweek doesn’t make sense,” Challenger says. “It’s not about the time you put in. It’s about the work you do.”

Businesses often get stuck in a rut.  Some managers find micromanagement to be intoxicating.  These managers tend to veer away from solutions that would give freedom to our people and relinquish perceived control.  I think Challenger is correct – these “old-school” approaches are in for a major overhaul.

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We are sales recruiters so we have been fairly immune to this question, but it is even appearing in our world.  For salespeople, the question is some variation of “How often will I be expected to be in the office?”  This question doesn’t mean they are planning on playing hooky; the candidate simply wants to start the discussion about working from home, their car, coffee shops, etc.

The Career News newsletter (sorry, no link) offers up a quick article on this topic:

When it comes to making a living, how many miles would you travel? According to many hiring agencies and recruiters, people job hunting are taking climbing gas prices into consideration. “If we were looking at them commuting 20, 30, 40 miles for a work assignment, they’re hesitating,” Blaise Krautkramer at Firstaff Staffing Services said.

Each week, about 50 people walk into our agency office, all of them expressing serious concerns about these high gas prices. A fair amount of these people are passing up job opportunities. “The cost of gasoline is a component in their decision, and it’s a difficult decision for them,” Krautkramer said. A short commute is now a top priority for job seekers.

If you haven’t done any hiring recently, be prepared for this topic.

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Here is a bullet point from a sales employment ad:

Home based office experience a major plus!

Can you imagine reading that point just 5 years ago?

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Apparently the answer to that question depends upon whom you ask.  From an older RecruitingTrends.com article:

Furthermore, executives’ innate understanding of what defines flexible work strategies varies. While the largest percentage (45%) define it as pertaining to time, 31% view it as something to do with an employee’s location, and another 23% see flexible work arrangements as something other than time or location.

I would fall in the “Flexible location” group in terms of defining it.  It would appear that this relatively new phrase requires a better definition.  Or perhaps all new phrases and terms begin with some ambiguity.

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The modern workplace is shifting towards a more ad hoc approach vs. a scheduled interaction according this The Economist’s excellent article Labour movement.  This article defines nomadism in the current work world:

Today’s work nomadism descends from, but otherwise bears little resemblance to, the older model of “telecommuting”, says Mr Ware. That earlier concept became popular in the 1990s thanks to cheap but stationary telecommunications technologies—the landline phone, the fax and dial-up internet. Because it still tied workers to a place—the home office—telecommuting implicitly had people “cocooning at home five days a week”, he says. But people do not want that: instead, they want to mingle with others and to collaborate, though not necessarily under fluorescent lights in a cubicle farm an hour’s drive from their homes. The crucial difference between telecommuting and nomadism, he says, is that nomadism combines the autonomy of telecommuting with the mobility that allows a gregarious and flexible work style.

That is an excellent explanation, isn’t it?  This trend is already in place and growing.  Mobility has become the emancipating factor in the equation.  Large companies are jumping into the nomadic ways too:

At Sun Microsystems, a company that makes hardware and software for corporate datacentres, more than half of the workforce is now officially nomadic, as part of a programme called “open work” in which employees have no dedicated desk but work from any that is available (called “hotdesking”), or do not come into the office at all.

And one good outcome of this?

Mr Schwartz, like Messrs Boyd and Coburn, has also noticed that he is having fewer “flesh meetings”.

…With more than 100,000 customers, he finds that he communicates far more efficiently through his blog, which is translated into ten languages and “on a good day reaches 50,000 people.”

…But in general he finds that “face-to-face is overrated; I care more about the frequency and fidelity of the communication.”

The article is long, but well worth the read.

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Is there a better anecdotal piece of information to support web commuting – $5.20 per gallon gas:

Five dollars and 20 cents for a gallon of gas. The number says a lot.

Yes, it may be the most expensive gas in America. But $5.20 doesn’t begin to explain essence — the rich, off-beat, some might say, eccentric, essence of Gorda, Calif.

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I got to start my first Monday of the new year without my laptop.  It died over the weekend so I come to you via a desktop system that is not my “home.”  It is a strange feeling being on another system.  It seems like there should be a resolution in here somewhere.

In that light, BusinessWeek.com went to the streets looking for input from managers.  The survey was literally conducted walking the streets of Boston so keep that in mind.  Two items were the winner:

Managers want to find a better work/life balance. As you saw in the video, one person is working 16 hour days. So much for exercising, seeing friends, or even having a family. There’s no time for balance—it’s all work all the time.

Managers see talent management as a pressing need for 2008. Companies need to pay greater attention to recruitment, employee development, and retention. One individual echoed this is a priority for his firm, and jokingly quipped, “If you have any answers, please email me.”

We have the answers.

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BusinessWeek.com offers up a good summation of today’s hiring market in terms of executive recruitment.  We could have wrote this article – it describes exactly what we are encountering in a couple of executive searches.

Let’s unpack a couple points from the article:

This new environment requires that executive headhunters and companies’ human resources and business leaders delve deeper into what’s really important to senior-management candidates and calibrate the recruitment process accordingly.

Very true.  Part of this understanding comes from assessing their motivations and rewards, the other part from interaction.

Yesterday I posted on the need for flexibility when hiring since candidates desire work/life balance far more than in previous times.  An example (my order):

Many headhunters say search assignments used to be considerably easier to orchestrate when more management-level career climbers were willing to commit—with little or no hesitation—to do whatever it might take to succeed in a new job if it promised big career opportunity.

The truth is that in today’s market for executive talent, sought-after leaders hold the bargaining advantage because they’re facing a resilient economy, multiple job offers, and likely a steady stream of calls from headhunters who want to move them.

The issues that motivate today’s top management talent to pursue new career opportunities have themselves grown more complex, in large part because of leaders’ desire for more work/life balance and/or the need to protect their assets.

The work/life balance topic is at the forefront of hiring and retention.  Companies that do not proactively address this topic will flounder in the hiring arena.  Unfortunately, one of our customers would not adjust despite our pleas and they ended up losing a strong candidate because of it.

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The US Senate designated October as National Work and Family Month back in 2003 in hopes that it would engage employers into sponsoring work/life programs for their employees. We’ve posted about this topic before, but as more and more Gen X & Y’ers fill the roles of the retiring Baby Boomers, this subject will require attention by everyone who plans on hiring.

Gen X & Y’ers consider work/life balance a very important topic, often reporting it as important as money. As we posted earlier this year, a survey of recruiters showed that 85% of them have seen candidates reject a job offer because it was misaligned with their work-life balance. So you have 2 choices, the first is to maintain the status quo and ignore the importance of life outside of work. The second is to look at ways that you can help your employees maintain a good balance.

An example: Deloitte & Touche, which in 2004 launched a program that allows qualifying employees to leave for up to five years to focus on personal goals, such as family. Now I’ll admit that is a fairly significant program and not every company is able to implement a comparable program. As an employer the question you need to ask is how balanced of a life do my employees have and, more importantly, what do they expect? I think you may be surprised at the gap.

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It seems these articles about the worst commutes come out every month.  This month Forbes.com offers up The Most Unhealthy Commutes in America.  First, the top 5 (with 2 California cities – no surprise):

The Top 5 Most Unhealthy Commutes
1. Riverside, Calif.
2. Atlanta, GA
3. Los Angeles, CA
4. (tie) Houston, TX
4. (tie) Washington, D.C.

Then you get this interesting piece of data (emphasis mine):

Not only do commuters in Southern California inhale the worst year-round particle pollution levels, but Riverside drivers also face the highest rate of fatal auto accidents per capita, and Los Angeles drivers spend the most time sitting in traffic. In 2003, the annual delay per traveler there was 93 hours.

Yeah, that seems crazy to me sitting up here in Minneapolis where I thought we had bad commutes.  But here is an author explaining the SoCal mentality:

“It’s a lifestyle choice,” says David Rizzo, author of Survive the Drive! How to Beat Freeway Traffic in Southern California. “We put our health second. To have a big house, we’re willing to put up with smog and a big drive. We sacrifice our longevity for short-term gains.”

Is it any wonder that telecommuting is such a hot topic in hiring today?

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