Where workforce planning, talent attraction, and facilities strategy meet

Quick shot for a busy summer Friday, (isn't every Friday now a busy Friday?), and a quick reminder on just how important workforce planning and talent attraction and acquisition challenges are towards making big, hairy organizational decisions like 'Where should we build the factory?' and 'Should corporate HQ be in some massive office park in the suburbs (near the affluent towns where all the C-suite lives), or within the city limits, (where the millennials all want to live?).

Take a quick Friday or weekend read of this piece from the New York Times titled "Why corporate America is leaving the suburbs for the city' to get a feel of how these dynamics and interplay between HR, talent, culture, and organizational strategy are playing out for companies like McDonald's, Motorola,  and General Electric.

An excerpt from the piece (and you really should read it all):

For decades, many of the nation’s biggest companies staked their futures far from the fraying downtowns of aging East Coast and Midwestern cities. One after another, they decamped for sprawling campuses in the suburbs and exurbs.

Now, corporate America is moving in the other direction.

In June, McDonald’s joined a long list of companies that are returning to downtown Chicago from suburbs like Oak Brook, Northfield and Schaumburg.

Later this month, the top executive team at General Electric — whose 70-acre wooded campus in Fairfield, Conn., has embodied the quintessential suburban corporate office park since it opened in 1974 — will move to downtown Boston. When the move is completed in 2018, the renovated red brick warehouses that will form part of G.E.’s new headquarters won’t even have a parking lot, let alone a spot reserved for the chief executive.

Why are these companies heading back into the central, urban areas that many of them exited for the (literally) greener pastures of the suburban corporate office park back in the last 20 - 30 years?

Like we do for everything else, it's time to blame the millennials. More from the Times piece:

The headquarters of Motorola Solutions will start moving to downtown Chicago on Aug. 15, though more workers will stay in suburban Schaumburg than move to the new offices near Union Station. But for the first time in half a century, top executives from the company will again be in downtown Chicago.

“Where you work really matters,” said Greg Brown, the chief executive of Motorola Solutions. “No disrespect to Schaumburg, but customers and new hires didn’t want to come to the suburbs an hour outside of Chicago. We wanted energy, vibrancy and diversity, and to accelerate a change in our culture by moving downtown.”

“This was the right thing in terms of strategy,” he said. “Millennials want the access and vibrancy of downtown. When we post jobs downtown, we get four or five times the response.”

On the surface, it all makes sense, and isn't really all that complex. These companies and others are finding it harder to draw the new, often technical talent they need to some far-flung corporate outpost an hour from the city center whose primary draws are things like 'good schools' and 'ample parking' - things that don't often attract childless, Uber-preferring younger workers.

But HR folks that have dialed in their workforce planning and talent attraction strategies to help inform the CEO and COO on matters such as these can't simply rest now that they have made the big call to relocate the company HQ back into the city. Eventually these new workers start to get a little older, start to think about wanting the things that make the suburbs attractive in the first place - the schools, the Whole Foods, the 1.2 acre lawn, etc. 

What happens then? Does the organization head back out to the 'burbs? Do you keep a 'millennial-friendly' presence in the city regardless? Workforce planning has always been important, it is just getting harder I think than it used to be in the past.

The best HR/talent advisor needs to have a little bit of cultural anthropologist in them I think, to better inform their organization's workforce and talent plans with at least an educated guess on what things outside of work are going to be important to the people that do the work. And where they want to live might be the most important of all.

Have a great weekend!

Also, in case you missed it - BIG news from the HR Happy Hour Show this week, read all about it HERE.

ANNOUNCEMENT: The HR Happy Hour Podcast Network

I am super excited today to share some great news - the official launch of the HR Happy Hour Podcast Network, and the details of the three new shows that will soon debut on the HR Happy Hour umbrella. My co-host, Trish McFarlane and I are thrilled to be joined by such a great lineup of shows and contributors, and you can read the details of the announcement HERE.

Some quick backstory for folks who may not be familiar with the HR Happy Hour Show, (I know, shocking!), that will help explain and set the context for today's announcement.

Back in 2009 I was an adjunct instructor at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY teaching a graduate-level course for HR Master's students on the topic of HR Technology. At that time I got the crazy idea to try and record interviews with HR and HR Tech leaders, and make these audio files a part of the course's required materials for the class. I used the Blog Talk Radio platform to make the recording process a little easier for guests, as back then, even Skype was hardly in use by most folks, and fewer folks were recording podcasts on their own, in even a quasi-professional manner.

Since then, the HR Happy Hour Show has evolved and transformed. The first two or three years featured mostly live-streamed shows broadcasting at 8PM on Thursday nights, complete with callers, a lively Twitter backchannel on the #HRHappyHour hashtag, and even dedicated Google Wave threads!

In the last few years the HR Happy Hour has become a more traditional podcast, generally pre-recorded, or recorded live at industry events, and (lightly) edited to fit the now much more widespread and popular podcast format and formula. The last few years have seen a dramatic rise in the overall popularity of podcasting in a number of topics and domains, and I personally am proud that the HR Happy Hour Show was podcasting before podcasting was cool! We have had a series of great guests, covered the most relevant topics in HR, HR Technology, work, and the workplace, and had a lot of fun along the way.

And now with the launch of the new HR Happy Hour Network, these first three new titles, (details are in the release here), and to be partnering with such a great group of people, I am confident the next seven years of the HR Happy Hour will be just as much fun as the first seven.

Many thanks to everyone who has listened to, supported, or even guested on the show so far - stay tuned for more great and informative content, HR and HR technology insights, and hopefully - lots of fun from your pals at the HR Happy Hour Show and Network.

VIDEO: Human Talks Show with guest Brent Skinner, Nucleus Research

A few weeks ago at the Oracle HCM World event in Chicago, I had the chance to partner with HR Happy Hour Show co-host and H3 HR Advisors CEO Trish McFarlane to record a video interview series titled "Human Talks" from the show floor.

I am excited to share this new video series that we did in partnership with Oracle. The Human Talks series is a show very similar to the HR Happy Hour Podcast where Trish and I were able to talk to HCM practitioners, analysts, and Oracle partners about some of the big issues, trends, and technologies in the HR and HR technology realms. Each episode is approximately 5 - 10 minutes or so, and well worth your time in hearing what is happening in the world of HCM. Please check out the first episode with one of our favorite industry analysts, Brent Skinner, Principal Analyst at Nucleus Research. You can check out the video HERE, or on the widget player below (email and RSS subscribers click through to see the video).

In this episode, Brent shares information on what their research is uncovering about performance management and learning and the impact from HCM technology. He also touches on how predictive analytics plays out in the workplace. Be sure to connect with Brent and Nucleus Research to learn more. 

This was a fun series of interviews and I will share future episodes of Human Talks as they are posted. 

Thanks to Trish and to our friends at Oracle for making this project possible.

CHART OF THE DAY: Big Trends in Working Age Population

Super quick hit for a summer let's-get-out-of-here-and-head-to-the-beach Friday where, at least here in the USA, many of us are going to tire of the phrase 'Corn Sweat' (go ahead and Google it).

Today's chart comes from our pals at the Economist, from a piece titled 'Vanishing Workers'. First the data, then some quick observations from me before you can power down and crack out the sunscreen.

In a nutshell, this data suggest the working age populations, (15 - 64),  in China, Japan, and Europe are all set to fall (relative to a 2015 baseline), somewhat dramatically in the next few decades, while by the same measure, this group will continue to rise in the US, (albeit at a slower rate than the recent past).

What happens (in general), when there are relatively fewer available workers, and what might be the implications in the USA where we will be bucking against this trend?

1. Fewer workers generally lead to rising wages, at least in the near term. And there is plenty of evidence of this already happening in China, where increased competition for workers (especially in manufacturing), has driven up wages for these workers, and made many firms think again and re-evaluate the cost advantages of locating these kind of operations in China.

2. Falling working age populations impact industries in different ways. With fewer workers, (and an increase in the dependency ratio, the total number of children and elderly divided by the working age population), housing and construction tends to suffer, as there is less demand for new, and larger housing from workers overall. But health care, child care, and related service industries might fare better, with an increased burden of care demanded by larger proportions of kids and older people.

3. For the US, one of the few industrialized economies that will not see such a fall in working age population over the coming years, the news is pretty positive. Larger proportions of working age folks tend to have a pretty direct and beneficial impact on GDP, output, and overall quality of life. And of course more folks in their prime earning years reduces the overall drag on the economy that can result from a higher dependency ration, all things being equal. There should be less need to raise payroll and corporate tax rates for example, in order to continue to fund things like Medicare and Social Security. The downside risk of course, is that jobs and opportunities for workers have to rise commensurately with this demographic trends, or else you end up with higher than desirable levels of unemployment or under-employment. But balanced against the alternative, potentially not having enough prime age workers to meet demand, (which will send investment elsewhere), it seems the US position to be the more desirable one in the long term. And for my line of work, the HR Tech space, it seems clear that growth and opportunity for HR Tech companies will continue to primarily reside in the USA, as Europe and other countries working age cohorts, (the 'users' of HR Tech), continue to fall.

Love the data. Love labor market demographics. If that makes me some kind of a geek, so be it.

Me fretting over me Level in Pokemon GO also makes me a geek, but for a different reason.

VACATION REWIND: The smart leader's approach to dress codes (and any other policy)

NOTE: I am on vacation this week - please enjoy a replay of a piece from March of this year.

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The smart leader's approach to dress codes, (or any other policy)

Happy Spring!

It's Spring right, at least here in the USA, (and I suppose some other places as well, I was never all that great at geography). But with Spring comes the return (hopefully), of warmer weather and the shift to our 'summer' clothes - both for work and for not work.

And the first time Gabe from accounting or Marcia in customer service turns up to work wearing some cargo shorts or worse, you or your organization's leaders might be tempted to send one of those beloved 'all employees' emails from HR that run down the ins and outs of the official dress code, as you know, we don't want to really treat folks like adults, at least not at work.

But before you do send that email listing just what types of concert T-shirts are acceptable and which ones are not, I would encourage you to read this piece from ESPN.com, on how one organizational leader is wrestling with these same workplace policy issues as you are: Joe Maddon, (Chicago Cubs manager), on dress code: 'If you think you look hot, wear it.' 

Get past the title for a second and read the whole piece. Here is a snippet to prod you along:

Cubs manager Joe Maddon met with his “lead bulls” on Sunday to go over team rules as 11 players and their boss discussed everything from a dress code to kids in the clubhouse.

“The biggest topic of discussion was shorts or not on the road,” Maddon said after the meeting.

Maddon isn’t a stickler for a lot of written rules, instead preferring a common-sense approach. He believes players know the line not to cross. He used last year’s policies -- his first on the team -- as a guideline. They worked out pretty well.

“You have like a force field, not an actual fence. Guys know if they go past a certain point you might get stung a little bit, but you don’t have to see the fence there,” Maddon explained. “I like that.”

“Exercise common sense with all this stuff,” he said. “There are so much archaic stuff that baseball stands for. I’m here to manage the team, not make rules. I learned my lesson with that to not go nuts about it.”

Just about everything you need to know about dress codes or most other workplace rules right there. Treat folks like adults, let them know what is really important for the organization to be focusing on, (it isn't the dress code), and involve a larger group of leaders and influencers on the staff as you talk about expectations and whatever policies you have. Not only will they help you define the rules, they will likely help you self-enforce them as well.

It is actually really simple. Simple enough for even the Cubs to figure out.

Have a great day!