Emphasis Added : workforce development

The One-Dimensional World of Work

Rob — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:32:00 GMT

This is a re-run from the old Emphasis Added, originally posted July 25, 2005. It's in line with my current interests and seemed like it was worth a re-post.

Imagine for a moment that technology, globalization and other “big trend” factors have transformed the US economy such that the only good job prospects are in the construction industry. In this world, construction work enjoys not only high economic status, but high cultural status. Prime time is filled with light comedies featuring affluent, attractive young roofers and carpenters; the tastes and values of this class of worker are celebrated in magazines and talked about on news shows. And because of declining prospects elsewhere in the US economy, displaced information workers and “symbolic analysts” in fields like finance, engineering, law, marketing, human resources and software development are encouraged to seek retraining, so they can profit from successful new careers in ditch-digging or cement pouring. “Making the most of the transition through education” is the policy makers’ solution, in lieu of any effort to preserve information work jobs, which are seen as wildly susceptible to outsourcing and the ticket to a permanent spot in the underclass.

Perhaps this scenario doesn’t interest you much, given its implausibility. But because of my professional role as a cheerleader for the information work economy, I can’t help thinking that the prevailing social, political, educational and analytic approach to occupational re-alignment has a certain poverty of perspective.

Here’s the thing: I’m a fairly bright guy in average physical condition, but I’ve always been a hopeless klutz with tools. If my economic survival were based on my ability to compete in a construction-centric economy, I’d be lucky to find minimum wage work. If the goals and orientation of my education were to prepare me for a life in construction, I’d have likely found the curriculum boring and irrelevant. I may have lost interest in education entirely and dropped out, or found marginal service-type work because I realistically appraised that neither my temperament nor my natural talents suited the economic opportunities that society presented. I probably would have resented the cultural sway of the dominant economic and occupational class and those people whose family or social background naturally inculcated them with the skills and values to succeed in a field that my “book smart” upbringing never prepared me for. I would certainly be receptive to any political message that promised to stand up for my values and my economic interests, and ignore “sophisticated” arguments that such messages were actually manipulative and exploitive demagoguery. Would all of this make me somehow deserving of my inferior social and economic status, despite my being possessed of the same basic humanity and moral character in this alternative world that I am here today, where I am economically successful?

It’s a troubling question. America in recent decades has become more sensitive to cultural diversity, but somehow less concerned about economic and occupational diversity. There’s an implicit assumption that one’s occupation is more mutable than cultural, religious or ethnic identity; that people, as economic creatures, will adjust their perspectives on work in response to a rational appraisal of the job market: in other words, that we will follow the money.

This is true to a great extent, but it’s not as true as it needs to be for a capitalist society to successfully weather a profound economic transition. The fluidity of labor will never match the fluidity of capital. Money doesn’t resist being taken out of real estate and put into the stock market. Money is indifferent as to whether its generated through rents or value-added processes. In an open economy, money passes with little friction from country to country, from use to use, instantly and without pain of adjustment.

By contrast, workers will change employers if conditions demand, but many would prefer steady work to the uncertainties of having to always be looking for the next opportunity. Some people have an ambition to climb through the ranks and levels of an organization, acquiring new skills and responsibilities, but many would prefer to show up day after day with little change to their routine. Some people may find the concept of changing careers several times in the course of their working life challenging and exciting; others are liable to view the prospect with dread and alarm. These are human reactions, morally and psychologically defensible in spite of their limited economic utility. As such, they represent a drag on the adaptability of labor that capital, by its nature, doesn’t have to face.

Globalism and technology exacerbate this irreducible inequality of labor and capital. As transactions become more complex and abstract, the human skills associated with the creation of wealth have become more complex and abstract. Work such as agriculture, construction and manufacturing has lost value relative to information work (the creation and manipulation of intellectual rather than physical property). This shift in value has been accompanied by a societal shift towards the values and assumptions of the information worker class.

What makes the transition to the information work economy so disruptive in America is that we seem incapable of discussing the full dimensions of it honestly. America’s mythology of the classless society demands that we ignore the heavy burdens and extreme demands we are placing on workers whose skills, temperament, values and priorities substantially handicap them in an information-centric economy. Capitalism has no good answer for the textile worker who doesn’t want to be retrained as a LAN administrator because she finds the work boring and stupid, or for the worker who is unmotivated by promises of advancement and new responsibilities because he prefers a simple routine.

Instead, we celebrate change, celebrate flexibility, and celebrate ambition, because it is only these characteristics that give labor any hope of maintaining some kind of parity with capital in a globalized world. The best we can do for workers is give them tools to adapt and be more productive: technology, education, communication channels and communities.

This is helpful to a point, but doesn’t address the moral dilemma at the heart of the economic transition. That is, in America, we are comfortable accepting high levels of economic inequality on the presumption that those at the bottom have, in some way, chosen to reject the possibilities for economic advancement that society offers them.

I’m not talking about lazy, inert, sociopathic or ineducable people, but those who cling to old ideas about work – that it’s sufficient to show up and do a days’ work without having to compete for advancement all the time; that it’s more rewarding to work with one’s hands, or work outside; that “information work” skills are confusing, frustrating and basically irrelevant; that traditional, less productive “craft work” is more interesting than homogenized, high-output information work. Because these attitudes represent an individual choice on some level, capitalism tells us that it is okay to punish those who hold them by consigning them and their labor to the lowest-value rungs on the occupational ladder.

The question is, do we want to allow the market to dictate values in this way? Are those attitudes toward work really “choices,” or are they closer in some ways to religious views, which Americans have no problem respecting on the level of an inherent trait?

In my professional role, I am obliged to rationalize the triumph of information work and provide a compelling narrative that includes positive scenarios for workers as well as capitalists. I am sympathetic to the values of the information work economy and sincerely believe that technology, communication, dissolution of boundaries, and rationalization of practices are the best way to achieve material and moral progress for the human race. At the same time, I can’t ignore the ways that those opinions are shaped by self interest. My skills and values are well-suited to this vision of work and society, which has, in many ways, been designed by people like me, to insure that people like me can succeed economically.

It’s comforting to imagine that anyone could be economically successful if only they embraced my values, my outlook, my tolerance for risk and change, and my attitude toward the importance of learning and information. Indeed, it’s so comforting that this has become the dominant paradigm in 21^st century American culture. It conveniently aligns moral virtue with economic rewards, and absolves the successful of responsibility for those left out, since it is, after all, their choice.

However, this exclusive focus on conscious choice, on humans as economically-rational creatures, is not the whole story. There are complicated factors that shape our attitudes toward work, factors that are far less susceptible to choice than we can afford to admit. Accommodating these factors and doing justice to the wider range of fundamentally moral attitudes toward work requires our institutions to assume some of the burdens of adjustment, rather than forcing those burdens exclusively onto the workers themselves. We know this is true, but acknowledging it implies criticism of the market economy, the fount from which our prosperity springs.

It’s a complicated problem, but by addressing it honestly, we can ensure that the progress promised by the information work economy is sustainable. It’s not a matter of guilt: it’s enlightened self-interest. Traditionalists around the world perceive the threat posed by capitalism to their strongly-held values, and their responses are not always either sophisticated or civil. It’s not necessary to compromise with the substance of these people’s views when they are incompatible with our liberal ideas of freedom and human dignity, but it would be helpful to draw the emotional sting from their message by addressing the genuine fear (largely economic insecurity) that is central to their appeal.

By accommodating a wider range of views and attitudes toward work, and doing our best to ensure that those who hold them have both social status and economic prospects, we make the platform that enables our own success less brittle and top-heavy. We need to recognize that, by insisting on advocating a single set of economic (and, by implication, moral and intellectual) values without giving any moral credence to crticis, we are creating the preconditions for a backlash that threatens all the progress we have made so far. It’s not hard to see those seams appearing today. It remains to be seen whether we choose to recognize and respond to the difficult underlying problem, or persist in the comforts of our facile assumptions.

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Five Ways to Be an Ambassador of Digital Culture in the Workplace

Rob — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:47:00 GMT

(crossposted at the excellent career guidance site Brazen Careerist)

The terms "tech-savvy" and "Millennial" seem joined at the hip, like "hopeless romantic" or "out-of-control pop diva." Of course, many romantics are nothing if not hopeful, some pop divas are models of good behavior, and not all Millennials are tech wizards - but we tend to hear much more about the stereotype than the exception. However, even Millennials who aren't bits-and-bytes pros do have something that only comes from having grown up marinated in technology, rather than learning it on the job: an innate level of comfort and familiarity with digital culture. That confers certain abilities, like seeing useful potential in new technologies, or finding fast ways to learn an unfamiliar application, that even clued-in older colleagues might lack.

In my book Generation Blend: Managing Across the Technology Age Gap, one of the main points I make to employers is that it is essential to create cross-generational conversations around technology to insure that everyone is making the most of their information toolkit. Part of this can involve formal training, where younger employees work directly with older colleagues in reciprocal mentoring environments to teach them tech skills while learning from their business knowledge. But the situation need not be so formal or structured, and it definitely does not need to come from the top down.

Millennials in a multi-generational workplace can make themselves more valuable to their employers and their colleagues - thus increasing their influence and opportunities at work - by becoming ambassadors of digital culture in a positive, pro-active way. This might also have the benefit of improving management perception of useful new technologies and practices at work, which might reduce some of the conflicts that are emerging in many workplaces between younger workers and rigid IT departments.

Some tips for turning yourself into an ambassador:

Demonstrate practical uses for the technology at work: Let's say you've come up with a great way to use wikis to share knowledge among your team, but the term "wiki" draws blank looks or nervous laughter. Show, don't just click through features; actually show people how and why the particular application can make people's jobs easier
Make an effort to understand IT's point of view. Some consumer-grade technology really is risky and dangerous from an IT perspective. If you want to introduce IM into your organization, don't just download Yahoo or AOL messenger, book up on some enterprise-grade solutions. If you anticipate IT concerns and help make their job easier, they may respect your point of view.
Start conversations: Many older workers are looking to young colleagues for cues on how to use technology better, but don't want to appear ignorant. Having these conversations involves using some tact. Remember that people in their 50s and 60s are not target markets for technology and are not necessarily subject to the same stream of information about new stuff in their lives as consumers and citizens. They are curious, but may not even know how to ask the right questions. That said...
Be a resource, not a know-it-all: Be patient, respectful and discrete when helping older colleagues or managers with technology. A lot of older workers I talked to report that they don't like asking for help with tech stuff because it could diminish their status and authority in the eyes of their peers - and in many cases, the younger person "helps" by taking over at the controls, doing the task so quickly that they can't follow, or explaining in terms they don't understand. Don't be that guy. Slow down, listen, show respect, and ask for your colleague's advice and experience in return.
Try to speak your boss's language: Remember that his or her job is not necessarily to make work easier and more convenient for you, it's to build value for the business. One supervisor I spoke to was having trouble getting her manager to see the virtue of telecommuting, because he suspected it would lead to slacking off. I recommended designing a pilot program that made telework contingent on every member of the department maintaining certain levels of productivity - otherwise the whole program would be canceled. This met the manager's objections because it left it to the employees to step up and show they could manage themselves.

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Online Resources Growing for Older Job Seekers

Rob — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:31:00 GMT

According to Aging Workforce News, the online job site CareerBuilder.com has launched a site specifically dedicated to workers 50 and older, driven by results of their recent survey which found that 22% of employers plan to rehire retirees from other companies in 2008 and that 14% of employers plan to provide incentives for older workers to stay with the company longer. These "Boomerang Boomers" will be a large and growing force in the workforce of the 2010s, especially in industries likely to have difficulty attracting younger workers because of their "old economy" reputations or traditional cultures.

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Is America Getting Dumber?

Rob — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 21:27:00 GMT

Clive Crook thinks it is. His piece on the Atlantic Monthly blog (entitled "The Dumbing of America") notes a study that shows that, "For the first time in decades, and probably ever, workers retiring from the US labor force will be better-educated on average (according to one measure anyway) than their much younger counterparts." He laments that this is likely to hurt American competitiveness, which has benefited from a surfeit of increasingly well-educated workers, particularly in the postwar era.

The study draws a policy implication from this data: that we need to do a better job of attracting well-educated immigrants. I happen to agree, but that's neither here nor there. Some of Crook's commenters take issue with the implicit assumption, which is that the ability to do skilled work correlates directly and almost exclusively with education (or, more precisely, educational attainment).

On some level, it's self-evidently true that you need a graduate-level education to work in many well-paid, specialized professions from law to medicine to engineering. But there are still plenty of value-creating activities that do not require, or even benefit from, a grad school degree. Many high-value skills can be learned on the job, or the productivity of less-educated workers supplemented by new technology. It's also true that many grad school programs are a waste of time, and produce little more than well-credentialed idiots. American competitivenss comes not only from having an educated workforce, but also from having good physical and social infrastructure, effective government, and transparent institutions. I guess I find the metric of advanced degrees a bit too coarse to measure something this important, especially when there are much more serious and obvious areas of decline to address.

But more fundamentally, in the age of the networks, collaboration technology and globalization, why is it still important to collocate brainpower within national borders? Brainpower goes to the highest bidder. What difference does it make if an American-owned company outsources R&D to India or South Korea, or if American born-and-bred biotech researchers wind up developing drugs for a Swiss-owned pharma company? The highly-educated class of workers is increasingly cosmopolitan. What matters is that the global supply of educated professionals meets the demand, not whether any one domestic workforce is producing more or less.

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More on Blue-Collar High Tech

Rob — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 20:13:00 GMT

I saw this piece in today's Seattle Times, headlined "Industrial Work Force Short on Tech Savvy." It's yet another reminder that the skills gap is making itself felt in the US economy, sector by sector, even in the midst of a looming recession. Anyone following the manufacturing industry in the age of globalization knows this is true. US manufacturing can compete with low-cost suppliers, but to do so, we need to get better at using knowledge and information to drive innovation. And in true wikinomic, bottom-up style, that innovation might just as well come from the front lines of the factory as from the engineers in the back room.

Consequently, manufacturers have been investing in a lot of new technology, designed not just to make processes faster and more efficient, but also to bring the knowledge and talents of workers into mainstream of the organization. This means many formerly low-skill jobs now require at least some familiarity with the accoutrements of the professional office: the PC, the Internet, email, and application software. But guess what? That kind of technology doesn't work without people at either end of it, contributing and consuming knowledge.

This new reality explains the observation made in the article that, "Many out-of-work trades people don't fit into today's technology-intensive factories."

Indeed. A lot of trades people became trades people to avoid becoming computer geeks.There's precious little discussion of that. The white collar professionalist mindset, which naturally predominates among people writing and thinking about technology and management, seems to have a blindspot when it comes to the notion that not everyone wants to be an information worker, even if the pay is good and the opportunities are better. A balanced economy creates good jobs for all kinds of people: the strong, the resourceful, the hard-working, the persuasive, and the dextrous as well as the smart. IT has been warping that balance for a while, and now the workforce is at the breaking point.

Fortunately, one trend in high-tech development is that information tools are becoming more abstract and more deeply embedded in work practices. For once, the technology is coming to the worker, rather than making the worker go to the technology (through extensive training). This is a subject I am planning to explore in detail later this year.

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Will Millennials be as Picky in a Down Job Market?

Rob — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 21:53:00 GMT

One of the main issues on the minds of employers is the well-documented willingness of young employees to up and leave if things aren't to their liking. According to a study by the Pew Research Center published in January, 2007, 72 percent of Millennials surveyed thought they had a good chance at landing a high-paying job, and relatively large numbers of young people keep expenses low by living with parents into their 20s. This, combined with messages about impending skills shortages and Baby Boom retirements, gives young workers a fairly high degree of confidence in being selective about their work situations and the opportunity to impose unusual expectations on their employers.

As Generation Blend went to press this fall, their was already a chill in the economic climate. Today's employment report confirms that US job growth is bleak enough to be characterized as a recession by many economists.Will this temper the expectations of Millennials or diminish their leverage in any meaningful way? Here are a few reasons why it won't:

Recessions come and go; demographics are long term. Everyone single member of the job market of 2020 has already been born. There are no more to come. So projections about the long-term labor market are fixed from the supply side (give or take changes in workforce participation rates), whereas demand is uncertain. Organizations still have to think long-term about retention, loyalty, the costs of turnover, and development of management talent, which will become especially scarce given the relatively small number of GenXers moving up to replace Boomers in higher-level responsibilities. Bottom line: there will still be competition for talented Millennials, even in a slow labor market.
The demand is for skills, not people. Businesses that derive their competitive advantage from knowledge creation can tighten their belts only so far, because their ability to execute and innovate depends on having the right people in the right roles. Savvy Millennials offer the job market skills, not just labor.
Millennials have already factored in expectations of turmoil. Strategically-educated Millennials have prepared for this kind of job market from birth; indeed, many of the eldest were born in the midst of the last severe recession in the US in the early 1980s. Even if finding a well-paying job becomes relatively more difficult, they may still prioritize the better job experience, recognizing that this is more critical to their long-term career growth.
Young labor is cheap labor. Recent studies have shown organizations are paying more and more to older and older workers, perhaps as a last-ditch knowledge retention effort to stave off a crippling wave of retirements. If I'm a bottom-line-focussed company looking to trim short term expenses, the large salaries and benefits of senior workers present a more tempting target for cuts than relatively low-paid junior-level workers eager to be fast-tracked into higher levels of responsibility.

Debt-ridden and inexperienced Millennials may face a recession with some anxiety and feel pressure to compromise their expectations in the short-term. However, they have many more assets to withstand a down labor market relative to most others in the economy. It may not be long before economic conditions actually sharpen demand for the skills, attitudes and productivity that young workers bring to the workplace, even at the expense of more experienced workers. The minute that scenario materializes, Millennials will integrate it into their mindset. Will that make them less picky? I doubt it.

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Generations and Life-Stages

Rob — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:54:00 GMT

Dan has a post up at Future of Information Work on the question of whether Millennials are actually different in important ways from previous generations of young people (and young workers), or if they are just "troublesome" to employers because all 20-somethings inherently lack commitment and tend to take a short-term view of employment. This difference between "life stage" and "generation" is something I discuss in Generation Blend. Below is the comment I added to Dan's post.

I think there's some truth to the idea that life-stage has a lot to do with behavior in the workforce. GenXers in their 30s and 40s tend to show greater organizational loyatly and teamwork than they did in their 20s because they have kids and mortgages to pay. Many Boomers heading into their 60s aren't workaholics anymore as they look for ways to wind down their careers. Even if you correct for those changes, though, it seems to me that there are definite differences in the ways that the generations approach their various life-stages - usually by attempting to correct what they see are the errors of their parents and immediate elders. GenX parents tend to take more time off. Paternity leave has only become really popular in the last 10-12 years, and the parenting practices that were common in the 1970s would probably lead to a visit from Child Protective Services today. Silent Generation retirees are moving back to city centers to stay connected to cultural ammenities, while their immediate elder Veteran Generation seniors moved to retirement communities to play golf. Millennials I talk to tend to find the cynicism of GenXers depressing, and GenX insistence on independence lonely and intimidating.

In short, I think it would be a mistake for organizations to expect the next generaiton of young people to act the same as "all young people." If your HR infrastructure is set up to recruit and manage 20-something GenXers or Boomers, chances are it is not very well-adapted to the unique expectations and requirements of Millennials.

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The Digital Class Divide

Rob — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 20:59:00 GMT

I just finished reading Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White Collar Dreams, Alfred Lubrano's excellent first-person account of the divide in values separating blue-collar and professional classes in America. Lubrano, an award-winning journalist and NPR commentator, grew up in the working-class Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn before attending Columbia University and joining the ranks of the information workforce.

Limbo mostly focuses on the conflicts faced by individuals making the transition from blue collar families to the very different set of assumptions that governs the middle-class world of professional work. Though there is often a gap in material conditions, Lubrano makes clear that the greatest distance is one of culture. Early on, he talks candidly about the distrust of learning prevalent in some working-class cultures - rooted in the fear that educated children will become embarassed of their humble origins and ashamed of their parents, or will move far away from the central family unit.

During the post-war industrial boom in the US, these attitudes did not have severe economic consequences. Dignified, well-paid work was available in factories, in construction, and in other industries that did not require education beyond high-school, if that. Sons could follow their fathers into trades; women could stay home to raise kids in the time-honored tradition.

Today, global competition, de-unionization, and other economic forces have made that lifestyle far less economically secure. Skilled trades still pay well, but manufacturing jobs have given way to low-level service and unskilled labor that is subject to commodity pricing and enjoys little protection from either unions or government regulation.

The good jobs of the 21st century are knowledge-work jobs, requiring a very specific orientation toward information and a very specific set of workplace values that involve embracing diversity of thought, questioning received wisdom, proving assertions with hard data, and collaborating with peers in a consensus-driven environment. According to Lubrano, these requirements run against the grain of blue-collar culture and may pose hidden challenges to information workers with blue collar backgrounds who are in all other ways at least as talented and driven as their middle-class colleagues. In Generation Blend, I discuss how differences in generational outlook affect the way people participate in the connected workplace. Lubrano makes the point, by implication, that differences in outlook stemming from economic class and background, can be just as important.

Society is well aware of the economic digital divide and the problems facing the most economically disadvantaged segments of America (and the world). But the working class are not among the very poor, and they seldom benefit from public or non-profit investment in their communities. I wonder how much data is available around the penetration and uptake of connected IT within the blue collar workforce, either as workers or consumers, and how it breaks down across generational lines.

As the information workforce begins to shrink over the next 10-15 years as Boomers age and retire, retrained blue collar workers offer a new source of talent for employers, with compelling advantages in their outlook and work ethic. Integrating them in to the middle-class professional culture of organizations may require some of the same adaptation as for older workers, to bridge both knowledge and cultural gaps.

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