CHART OF THE DAY: The American Dream of Renting

Ok, so perhaps that title was not totally fair, as the while the below chart could be interpreted in a couple of different ways, depending on your point of view and level of relative optimism/pessimism/cynicism.

But first, the chart in question, showing the trends in American home ownership for roughly the last two decades, (my comments of course, after the jump):

The current percentage of Americans owning their homes stands at about 65%, roughly equal to the rate in 1995, prior to the last two recorded recessions, (as indicated by the gray areas on the chart).

And the rate has been declining since about 2004, well before the American financial crisis of 2008/9, the ensuing economic slowdown, and the dramatic tightening of the availability of mortgage credit.  Combine tighter credit standards with the sharp rise in unemployment (and employment security) in the period of 2008 - 2010, then you have the basic root causes for the fall in home ownership. Even the historically low mortgage interest rates of about 2011 until, well, until now, have not been able to reverse this trend. Oh, and one more data point to consider - all cash sales of property (primarily from banks and other investors), have continued to rise - some estimates say these cash sales now constitute half of all transactions. Even if a prospective individual home buyer has a stable job, and can qualify for a home mortgage, they often find themselves losing out to a competing all cash offer from an investor or syndicate.

In the depths of the recession it was often theorized that employment mobility was becoming compromised by people's inability to sell (at a price that would be acceptable if they could sell at all), their existing homes in order to facilitate a job change or even a transfer inside their current company. In many parts of the country large numbers of homeowners were underwater on their homes, owing more to the mortgage holder than the home could expect to fetch in a sale.

In 2013 and perhaps in the future, the trends in the rate of home ownership and in the increase of all cash and investor-driven residential home sales, while seemingly not positive developments for the average employee, could be ones that end up benefiting the organization. In 2009 and 2010, organizations were probably finding it hard, (or very expensive), to facilitate employee transfers around the country or to convince that desirable candidate to relocate from one state to another when selling a home at a loss simply was too much of a financial burden to take on, no matter how fantastic the job opportunity might have been.

But with the home ownership trends heading downward, and the investor-driven all cash sales on the rise, the chances are increasing that the great candidate or that high-potential manager you'd like to send on a rotational assignment to Kentucky are going to much more able to make these kinds of moves in the future. Without the need to sell the house, well, most folks are just a few months away or a broken lease from taking the next great gig.

Of course, while not being burdened by home ownership makes someone more likely to listen to your opportunity or offer, it also makes them equally able and receptive to everyone else's offers as well.

Happy Halloween my friends.

On our wearable technological future workplace

If you haven't yet, you should really spend some time reading Josh Bersin's excellent piece on Forbes, 'The 9 Hottest Trends in HR Technology... and Many are Disruptive.' In the piece, Josh combines his insight into the HR and HR technology markets to offer up his view of some of the most important, and potentially impactful trends for HR and the workplace in the near and semi-near future. 

Josh hits some trends that have been brewing for a few years now, (video, social, and Big Data in talent management and HR), but it is his last trend 'Watch for Wearable Computing and the Internet of Things', that interests me the most, and I wanted to touch upon briefly here.

Josh describes the potential for recruiting applications that run on wearable devices like Google Glass, (something I wrote about on the blog some time back), and a different kind of wearable device from Hitachi that monitors employee movements, activities, and interactions in the hopes of helping the organization (and the individual), 'learn' about when and with whom they are most productive, inspired, and efficient. I even blogged about a similar technology all the way back in 2011.

We all like to say that endless meetings suck the life out of us at work, but with a kind of 'work logging' device that could track the time and participants in a meeting, then perform some analysis about how much or little 'great' work got done soon after, then an organization might be able for the first time be able to 'know' the true cost of their propensity to endlessly gather around large, wooden tables.

And as I wrote about in 2012, a 'Glass' type device to help inform, monitor, and help an interviewer (or manager) adapt on the fly to interactions with candidates or employees seems to hold incredible potential for increased accuracy and productivity. Additionally, the ability of Glass (and presumably other technology), to record and immediately make available digital records of these interactions will provide a real-time capability and mechanism for in the moment feedback, coaching, and improvement.

But there is a downside to this, certainly, for the worker anyway. The loss of perceived privacy namely. While we have all come to accept the fact that while on company time and using company equipment and networks that our digital activities can be and probably are being monitored, most of us would be less willing to sign up for offline (hallways, meetings, the cafeteria), monitoring as well.

At work, we like to be able to steal away from the computers and phones and have side conversations, chats in the break room, even the occasional adult beverage or two with our peers and colleagues. The beauty of these kinds of interactions is that they are generally completely unscripted, informal, and more relaxed. Exactly the kinds of interactions that smarter people than I like Marissa Mayer talked about when she famously put a stop to remote working arrangements at Yahoo a few months back. But will these interactions be as 'free' and as valuable and productive if they are being tracked, monitored, recorded?

I do think the horse is just about out of the barn, at least on these technologies themselves. Many organizations will indeed see these kinds of wearable, always-on, always tracking, always recording devices as a simple extension of phone, network, and email monitoring that is generally accepted and expected in the workplace. Most employees have adapted to this reality by generally keeping personal, controversial, and potentially inflammatory content off of corporate devices and networks. But once the corporation extends 'monitoring' to the person, and not just the tools the person uses? Well, that is a different situation entirely.

Whether or not it takes two years or more like ten, it seems to me that we will almost certainly see more tracking, monitoring, and recording of workers of all types - from service providers out in the field, to customer service folks, to information workers at the corporate office, and who knows, maybe even to the big shots in the big offices too.

It will be really interesting when, as I first asked back in 2011, whether or not employees are going to be excited about wearing a 'workplace wire'. 

The end of retirement

Some highlights, (or lowlights, depending on your perspective), from the recently released Wells Fargo Middle Class Retirement Study, an annual look at the attitudes, preparedness, and expectations for retirement amongst middle class American worker:

1. More than half the middle class (59%) are very clear that their top day-to-day financial concern is “paying the monthly bills,” an increase from 52% in 2012.

2. Saving for retirement ranks a distant second place, with 13% calling it a “priority."

3. Four in ten middle class Americans (42%) say saving and paying the bills is “not possible.”

4. 48% are not confident they will be able to save enough for a comfortable retirement.

And last but not least the major implication for HR and Talent pros from this pretty depressing report on the state of American middle class retirement readiness:

5. 34% of the middle class say they will work until they are “at least 80” because they will not have saved enough for retirement, up from 25% in 2011 and 30% in 2012

A pretty grim situation on the current state of the average middle class American worker you would have to say. Even allowing for some sample size error, and for the inability of folks to accurately estimate the amount of funds needed for their retirement, (and their likely life spans), which I would argue would put even more folks in the 'there is no way I can ever retire' category, when over a third of folks think they will be working until they are 80 years old then I think we have to pause and think about the implications of that conclusion.Save my seat. My shift at Walmart ends at Noon.

I know it has become perhaps even trendy to say or think things like, 'I'm never going to retire', or to look at the traditional view of 'Full' retirement, i.e. doing absolutely no work at all once you leave the workforce as a relic of our parents generation, many of whom logged 30+ years at one employer and hit 65 (give or take), and started drawing a nice monthly company pension check that combined with their savings and Social Security payments would see them nicely into their golden years. With long-term employment at one employer and guaranteed pensions no longer the norm, the entire geometry of the path to retirement in 2013 looks almost nothing like it did even 25 years ago.

But it seems to me like the folks that I hear that proudly talk about 'never' retiring, really aren't the same ones that the Wells Fargo survey is measuring. Mostly, it seems, that 'I'm never retring' people are the ones that are making that decision quite consciously and out of a desire to continue the interesting and challenging work that they have been fortunate and industrious enough to have been doing. They probably could, strictly speaking from a financial point of view, afford to retire in the traditional sense close to the traditional retirement age.

No, it seems to me that most of the rest of us, and the majority of the survey respondents, still remain philosophically attached to what is fast becoming a relic of the past, that after logging 30 or 35 years as a loyal and diligent cog in the corporate machine that you'd have at least 10 or 15 years of front porch sitting, lemonade drinking, and grandchild spoiling to look forward to, all unencumbered by the demands of work, (and some 32 year-old hotshot and clueless boss).

But this survey, and likely a dozen other we can find, tell a very different story, one that is more about the mismatch between expectation and reality, and one where we see what has long been a cherished and venerated ideal bucking up against the reality of life in corporate American in 2013.

Retirement might indeed be over in America in the very near future.

Is your workplace ready to accommodate even more workers in their 70s and 80s?

Have a great week all! 

SPORTS WEEK #4 - Visualizing data - sports and otherwise

Note to readers: As I have had a really busy Summer and early Fall preparing for the now recently concluded HR Technology Conference, the posting frequency here has been pretty diminished lately. Additionally, I find myself well behind my regular number of 'sports' posts that form the basis of my contribution to the annual 8 Man Rotation E-book on sports and HR. So I have declared this week of October 21 to be 'Sports Week' on the blog. I'm shooting for 5 days of sports-themed posts to make sure I don't get dropped from the 8 Man crew. So if sports takes are not your thing, check back in a week of so, when I will probably have another equally inane theme working.

Onward..

As I wrap up 'Sports Week' on the blog I figured for a Friday I would keep it simple take the easy way out and point your attention to the always interesting, frequently amazing Information is Beautiful site where the contenders for their annual Information is Beautiful awards are being featured.

The awards are meant to showcase and honor excellence in data visualization, infographics, interactive data presentation, and tools with which to analyze and interpret data and information. And, as luck would have it, several of the submissions in the Data Visualization category have sports themes, as sports continues to be a ripe area for advanced data analysis, and for new ideas about how to examine and interpret existing data sets.

The chart on the right side of this post, a graphic that presents some analysis and comparisons of the playing statistics of the 2013 NBA All-Stars naturally caught my attention, and there are similarly well-crafted and visually appealing submissions about soccer, bike racing, baseball, and more.

But beyond the mundane world of sports, there are more serious and probably more important visualizations and tools that you should check out over on the Information is Beautiful site.

With the seemingly endless amounts, types, and increased speed with which we are becoming inundated with data about our business, our workforces, our labor market and more, it has become more and more important that the ability to understand and present complex data in a relevant, meaningful, and accessible manner is a skill set any successful modern leader will need to possess.

Sure, the charts and tools that are over at the Information is Beautiful site might be a little bit beyond your capabilities with design, and might be a little too much for the presentation of the more banal kinds of data we often deal with as HR and Talent pros, but there is certainly lots in terms of ideas and inspiration that anyone can take from such visually stunning displays.

Ok, that's it, 'Sports Week' is wrapped, be sure to come back next week for an equally hard hitting series on the types and properties of the various Halloween candies and treats.

Have a great weekend! 

SPORTS WEEK #3 - No one cares what you don't have

Note to readers: As I have had a really busy Summer and early Fall preparing for the now recently concluded HR Technology Conference, the posting frequency here has been pretty diminished lately. Additionally, I find myself well behind my regular number of 'sports' posts that form the basis of my contribution to the annual 8 Man Rotation E-book on sports and HR. So I have declared this week of October 21 to be 'Sports Week' on the blog. I'm shooting for 5 days of sports-themed posts to make sure I don't get dropped from the 8 Man crew. So if sports takes are not your thing, check back in a week of so, when I will probably have another equally inane theme working.

Onward..

No matter who you are, where you work, and the time/budget/resources/talent that you have at your disposal to carry on your campaigns for conquest of the world the unassailable fact is that someone out there has access to more/better/faster/smarter than you. 

Unless you are a recruiter or Talent pro at Google. Then you have already won, and there is no need to read any further.

But if you are not in that prime position of recruiting for or managing talent at the clear market or geographic top dog then from time to time you run into what are 'competitive disadvantages' in your efforts to find, attract, coach, develop, retain, and squeeze the best performance from your workforce.

Someone else can offer a better starting salary to college recruits.

Someone else has a better, more comprehensive benefits program.

Someone else has won a few of those 'Best Places to Work' awards, (the ones you can't be bothered to fill out the application for).

Someone else has a reputation for sticking with their strategy, even when times are tough, and not announcing layoffs three days after posting record earnings.

You get the idea. No matter how great you are, someone out there is probably doing it better.

You can let your relative disadvantage be that crutch you rely on, and the excuse you fall back on when explaining why you can compete with the better funded, faster, sexier, and generally 'not that different that you, just not as obviously dysfunctional' others in your space.

Or you can take a page from the Triqui Indian (or Mexico) boys basketball team, and not only compete, but win and dominate an international competition while PLAYING BAREFOOT.

From a CNN piece describing the team and the tournament:

Despite most of the team being of short stature and playing barefoot, the Triqui Indian boys from Mexico won the championship -- and the hearts of many -- at the International Festival of Mini-Basketball held in Argentina.

Their coach, Sergio Zuniga explains that playing barefoot is a reflection of the poverty in their community in the state of Oaxaca.

"The boys train barefoot, they always walk barefoot. There are no resources to buy shoes," Zuniga commented in an interview with the Basketball Federation of the Province of Cordoba, where the tournament was held.

The seven games against six local teams ended with incredible scores: 86-3 over Celestes; 22-6 against Cordoba University; 72-16 against Central; 82-18 over Hindu; 44-12 against Monteeis and 40-16 over Regatas de Mendoza.

The National Sports and Physical Culture Commission of Mexico named the team as the "Barefoot Giants of the Mountains."

Awesome.

A team of poor, short, and certainly disadvantages and barefoot kids from the mountains of Mexico remind us that whatever barriers or obstacles or 'It's not fair' complaints that we might offer up are just about always pretty hollow, and kind of meaningless.

The message?

Find a way. Don't settle. Don't let the competition beat you before the game has even started.

And don't underestimate the determination of a foe that by virtue of playing through some remarkable challenges have become much, much tougher than you realize.