The Future Performance Enhanced Workplace

We all know, and if you are like me, have probably grown sick of, the Lance Armstrong saga.

The long story is really long, (and about as boring as a 200 mile bicycle race), but the tale more or less breaks down like this:

1. Armstrong begins his cycling career and has some initial success

2. Armstrong is diagnosed with and successfully battles testicular cancer 

3. Armstrong wins more cycling championships - including 7 consecutive Tour de France titles

4. Lots of folks think he must have been 'cheating', i.e. using performance enhancing drugs or other banned non-natural methods to have such sustained dominance and excellence

5. Armstrong denies all accusations and charges - primarily relying on the fact that he never failed any actual drug tests

6. Eventually, and in the face of what they claim to be overwhelming evidence of Armstrong's guilt, the cycling authorities strip Armstrong of his cycling victories due to this (still alleged) cheating

Your reaction to the Armstrong story, and similar stories about the use of (usually) banned Performance Enhancing Drugs by athletes in other sports like baseball, football, and track might be to simply shrug it off as a 'sports' story, and not particularly relevant to the real world, and certainly to the real workplace.

Or you might be some kind of 'purist' and feel a measure of outrage, indignation, or disappointment in how Armstong, (allegedly), and other 'cheating' competitors have sullied the games they play, and made it difficult if not impossible for honest, 'clean' athletes to have a chance to compete on a level ground.

Or perhaps you may be a realist or cynic and conclude that Armstrong was a cheater, but so were all the other top racers, and that in order to compete at the highest levels of the sport that is what was required. If you feel that way, then you probably still respect Armstong's accomplishments - cheater or not, he did win all those races.

But what if the ethical and medical issues surrounding the use of Performance Enhancing Drugs move from the world of sports, and into more mundane and routine forms of endeavor, and more workplaces, maybe even one that looks like yours?

Check out a recent piece from the BBC titled 'Concern over 'souped-up' human race', which describes how Performance Enhancing Drugs might potentially play a more significant role in the workplace of the future.  From the BBC article:

Four professional bodies - the Academy of Medical Sciences, the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society - say that while human enhancement technologies might improve our performance and aid society, their use raise serious ethical, philosophical, regulatory and economic issues.

In a joint report, they warn that there is an "immediate need" for debate around the potential harms.

Chairwoman of the report's steering committee Prof Genevra Richardson said: "There are a range of technologies in development and in some cases already in use that have the potential to transform our workplaces - for better or for worse."

There may be an argument for lorry drivers, surgeons and airline pilots to use enhancing drugs to avoid tiredness, for example.

But, in the future, is there a danger that employers and insurers will make this use mandatory, the committee asks.

An interesting take and one that poses new and more important ethical and moral questions in the workplace than whether or not Roger Clemens should be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Could you see a future workplace where your front line staff is enticed or even required to take or leverage some kind of supplement to be more alert or mentally sharp?

As the workforce gets older, could you envision the use of workplace Performance Enhancing Drugs become more prevalent?

And in this potential future Performance Enhanced workplace what about individuals that want to work 'clean?'

Or is this all just crazy talk?

From the Friendly Skies: A Lesson in Workforce Planning

Here is what can happen in an industry when labor market conditions, regulatory changes, shifting compliance requirements, are mixed with a generous dose of a 'Just like the Republicans we should have seen this coming' demographic shift.

Check this out from the Wall Street Journal this past weekend - 'Airlines Face Acute Shortage of Pilots':

U.S. airlines are facing what threatens to be their most serious pilot shortage since the 1960s, with higher experience requirements for new hires about to take hold just as the industry braces for a wave of retirements.

Federal mandates taking effect next summer will require all newly hired pilots to have at least 1,500 hours of prior flight experience—six times the current minimum—raising the cost and time to train new fliers in an era when pay cuts and more-demanding schedules already have made the profession less attractive. Meanwhile, thousands of senior pilots at major airlines soon will start hitting the mandatory retirement age of 65.

Another federal safety rule, to take effect in early 2014, also will squeeze the supply, by giving pilots more daily rest time. This change is expected to force passenger airlines to increase their pilot ranks by at least 5%. Adding to the problem is a small but steady stream of U.S. pilots moving to overseas carriers, many of which already face an acute shortage of aviators and pay handsomely to land well-trained U.S. captains.

It's a proverbial 'perfect storm' for the airlines, and not the familiar kind that simply traps passengers for hours on the tarmac waiting for a gate, but rather the kind from which there are no obvious or simple answers and remedies.  The workforce is aging, the requirements for new entrants are getting even more rigorous, the training or feeder systems for new replacements are drying up, (the piece cites some disturbing statistics about a dramatic drop-off in flight school training program participation), and global competition for scarce talent is driving up the salaries for many current pilots, making them much more likely to at least consider opportunities outside the USA.

This story is about airline pilots, truly probably always a pretty tough role to source for and fill, but increasingly we will see versions of this story playing out in other industries as well.  It isn't just experienced airline pilots that are getting ready to retire - it is engineers, skilled tradespeople, teachers, HR bloggers - no class of workers is immune.  And I certainly don't need to remind anyone of the ongoing drama and saga about the 'skills gap' - a topic for another day but relevant to this discussion as a reminder that an aging workforce is just one of many challenges facing the talent professional in the coming years.

Last week I had a post on some trends shaping global people management, and in that post we talked about how it was surprising and disappointing that adoption of 'Web 2.0' modern and social technologies was rated incredibly low in importance and relevance by global HR and business leaders.

One of the commenters (rightly) pointed out that the better story was another of the 'trends' that was also ranked extremely low in importance - 'Managing an Aging Workforce.' I think the airline pilots piece in the WSJ helps to reinforce that point and to remind us all, (as if we really needed a reminder), that while business, strategies, customers, technologies, and markets are constantly changing and are usually unpredictable - that one factor in this volatile planning mix is pretty constant and reliable. 

Everyone in your organization is getting a little bit older each day. And some days it feels worse than others.

Hopefully the airlines will make the needed changes and adopt new strategies to meet their resource needs - and hopefully it will give the rest of us a bit of a warning that we may not be as secure in our talent plans and sourcing strategies as we think for the time when our folks start to retire.

The Just in Time Workforce

Just-in-time or JIT is a concept from manufacturing, more specifically from the discipline of supply chain management that is designed to reduce a manufacturer's costs and increase efficiency by improving the flow of supplies and goods, reducing the amount of in-process inventory that is purchased and stored, and more effectively aligns production, (and production workers), with customer demand.Juicy

Essentially, JIT can be simplified as a process where component parts inventories are kept extremely low, production is raised or lowered to match ebbs and flows of customer demand, and the overall manufacturing process becomes more agile and less costly.  JIT has been around for a long time in the manufacturing world, but now, and as highlighted by a recent piece in the New York Times titled 'A Part-Time Life, As Hours Shrink and Shift, many of these concepts are bleeding into retail and service industries as well.

In the NYT piece, we learn how in more and more Part-time dominated workplaces like retail and fast or fast-casual dining, organizations and front-line managers are using JIT concepts, (enabled by more sophisticated workforce scheduling technologies), to better match and adapt the part-time worker's schedules to ever-shifting customer demand and conditions. Take a look at an example of near JIT scheduling from the NYT piece:

At the Jamba Juice shop at 53rd Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, along with the juice oranges and whirring blenders is another tool vital to the business: the Weather Channel.

The shop’s managers frequently look at the channel’s Web site and plug the temperature and rain forecast into the software they use to schedule employees.

“Weather has a big effect on our business,” said Nicole Rosser, Jamba’s New York district manager.

If the mercury is going to hit 95 the next day, for instance, the software will suggest scheduling more employees based on the historic increase in store traffic in hot weather. At the 53rd Street store, Ms. Rosser said, that can mean seven employees on the busy 11-to-2 shift, rather than the typical four or five.

That sounds really cool, and pretty smart as well, no?  You could even argue that incorporating an external condition like the weather into financial, operational, and workforce planning is a perfect example of the latest buzzword 'Big Data'. Either way, for the managers and owners of the Jamba Juice it is a smart application of data, technology,and understanding of their customers to more efficiently meet demand, (and increase profits).

But unlike manufacturing components that sit on a shelf in a warehouse waiting to be uses, the JIT levers in this example are actual people, the part-time workers of the Jamba Juice that, again unlike spare axles or tires, have lots of other things to balance around their work making smoothies.  Other jobs, school, family obligations, child care - it could be anything, but in a world where their work schedules become less and less predictable, (more JIT), their challenges and stress levels naturally ratchet higher. 

Most of these folks, I would bet, are not just sitting at home checking the Weather Channel like their managers are, waiting to see if a 90-degree day might mean they'll get called in to work.

The point of this?

I suppose that in a world where data, technology, and the increasingly powerful combinations that are forming from the two that enable us to get better and better at utilizing resources of all kinds, that the actual Human resources get the same treatment as the other components of production.

Have a great week all!

The Trends Shaping Global People Management, and One That Isn't

Recently the Boston Consulting Group published a report and research study titled 'Creating People Advantage 2012: Mastering HR Challenges in a Two-Speed World', a look at the most pressing and important trends and issues in Human Capital Management gleaned from their survey and interviews with over 4,000 HR and Business Executives from over 100 countries. You can access the full 59-page PDF report here.

Take a look at the summary chart below - you probably won't be too surprised by the three most important HCM topics as defined by 'High' Future Importance to the organizations, coupled with 'Low' Current Capability in that discipline. 

In case you can't figure out the chart, (it took me a minute), the three topics that fell in the red or 'Strong Need to Act' zone were:

Managing Talent - Ok, kind of generic, but I guess it makes sense

Improving Leadership Development - Sort of a perennial issue in most organizations, but as the report details, becoming more acute due to demographic reasons, (the aging workforce, mainly)

Strategic Workforce Planning - Most organizations reporting ongoing difficulty in adequately forecasting short and long-term talent needs

So taken together, not all that surprising I guess, we have been hearing and reading about these trends and critical areas of focus for HR and Talent professionals for some time now. We need to get smarter at understanding our people, at developing them for future leadership roles, and more precisely planning for our future talent needs.  

Basically, we need to just get better at our jobs. Sounds like a sound bite from the press conference of every losing football coach ever.

But what stood out to me from the report was not the three 'red' items, but rather the one topic out of 22 that registered on the opposite end of the scale - at the bottom of the scale in capability but also rated as least important in the long term, namely 'Actively Using Web 2.0 for HR.'

What? 

Applying the latest in social, particiapatory, collaborative, and modern technology to improve HR and Talent Management rated dead last?

Even 'Improving Employer Branding' (which hardly anyone even understands), rated more important?

I have to say even though I would not have expected a really geeky, technical sounding function or topic like 'Web 2.0' (and please, BCG can you drop that term, it fell out of fashion in 2009), to register above most of the more traditional and familiar HR and Talent focus areas, to see it rank last in future importance by so many Global HR leaders is a little concerning and sad.

As a proponent of workforce technologies and as someone who knows the impact that the application of collaborative and social technologies can have to help address almost ANY of the topics on the BCG survey, I hope that these results are not truly indicative of how HR pros see these tools and their potential.  

What are you seeing in your organization - are the new tools and technologies on your radar in HR?

#HRHappyHour Tonight - 'The 8 Man Rotation NBA Preview'

This week the HR Happy Hour Show is back live - and we are back with my favorite show of the year - the Annual NBA Season Preview brought to you by your friends from The 8 Man Rotation.

You know you love sports, you love the NBA, and you love nothing better than five frustrated short (except for KD), white dudes talk about basketball.

Here are the details you need to know to catch the show tonight, and hopefully join in on the fun:

HR Happy Hour 150 - 'The 8 Man Rotation NBA Preview' 

 

Thursday November 8, 2012 - 8:00PM ET

 

Sponsored by Aquire

 

Call in on 646-378-1086

 

Follow the backchannel onTwitter - hashtag #HRHappyHour

You can listen live on the show page here - also on the widget player below (email and RSS subscribers click through)

 

Listen to internet radio with Steve Boese on Blog Talk Radio

Not familiar with The 8 Man Rotation?

 

The 8 Man Rotation are your pals in the HR/Talent/Recruiting world that are just a little too obsessed with sports, pop culture, and trying to convince you that you can understand work, talent, HR, and the world in general by seeing things through the lens of sports, movies, hip-hop, and comic books.

 

This week on the show some or all of The 8 Man Rotation - Kris Dunn, Tim Sackett, Lance Haun, Matt 'akaBruno' Stollak, and Steve Boese will be in the house to talk NBA, and maybe sprinkle in some politics, movies, TV, and music as well.

 

We also plan on talking politics, the election, whether or not a new set of Star Wars movies makes sense and more.

I hope you can join us for what should be a fun and entertaining show!