Welcome to Part 4 of this four-part interview series with Lisa Buckingham and Juliet Bourke, and James Kelley is the moderator. In Part 1, we discuss the impact of inclusive leadership, authenticity, and what is on the horizon. In Part 2, we dove into the notion of soft skills, generational talent, and some gaps. Part 3 dives into the role of the 'other' employee and how an organization can bring gig workers into the fold and help them feel like they are part of the organizational culture. Part 4 concludes with a controversial question about pay.
James Kelley:
Currently, all macroeconomics are pointing toward recession in 2023. As I said earlier, high inflation and interest rates are rising; FedEx suggests the world's coming to an end, yet the labor market is still scorching hot. It's also predicted to rain cats and dogs soon, so the world's ending as I see it. So in these times of uncertainty, organizations tend to reduce their workforce. If you had a magic wand, is there an alternative solution where an organization can retain the talent and create a win-win situation?
Juliet Bourke:
Well, that's the thing that we saw with COVID. So those organizations that shed talent quickly are now in such a pickle as we advance because they damaged trust within the organization.
Lisa Buckingham:
And it's how they were let go, as well.
Juliet Bourke:
Well, that's the thing. People are finding it hard to come back. So what that means this time is when people hear those signals of a recession coming, they've actually had the lived experience in a brief timeframe just two years ago of how difficult it was to recruit. So it makes them work harder at retaining people in whatever way they can. So whether it's going down to shortened hours or reducing pay but holding onto your talent. Because we still need to figure out how it will go with global mobility, and that was where most of us were getting talent. We were bringing in people from overseas, which has stayed at the same level it was previously.
Lisa Buckingham:
And the cost savings isn't there anymore, and that's thankful because wages are rising. A few things about this. First, companies have in the past shaved around their benefits plans and frozen pension plans or reduced their matches in 401K, and they lose people. So you could take a holiday from things like that. It depends on where you are financially in the organization.
But when it comes down directly to your question, James, if people are being let go, this is where human resource leaders and organization leaders need to stand up and create alum groups. They need to call their competitors and say, "I know this is weird, but I'm going to give you a resume book." And try to help talent and outplacement. I have to tell you, it makes me hearken back to the financial crisis of 2008, and we were letting people go, and we were like, "But we might need them back." So let's have an experience that is as good as it can be when you're telling somebody they're losing their job. It's a terrible situation.
Juliet Bourke:
Yeah, I know, but I want to push back on that a little bit because I think we pulled the pin too early: "we're going to let these people go." And we must be prepared to take some financial hits in the short term for the long term.
Lisa Buckingham:
I don't disagree with you at all, and sometimes it becomes a finance conversation, and no offense to any financial executives. But, still, my husband's one, so I have to go through my quarterly business review all the time now. It's never fun. :)
But that's right because then you're like, "Well, wait a minute, why were these people not amazing last quarter? And now we're saying we have to let them go?" So you have to take on some risk.
Juliet Bourke:
Yeah.
James Kelley:
I want to ask more of a controversial question. Let's imagine that everything's imploding, and you have these publicly traded companies where the CEO makes 30 million a year, 40 million a year. What if they said, "Hey, I'm going to give that back to the employees because I made that 30 million a year for the last five years. I'm pretty set." What if they took that frame of reference? What impact would that have on quelling the uncertainty and creating fans of your workforce, of the leaders? What if the approach was a bit different from that perspective? And I know only some C-suites can do that. I'm aware of that.
Juliet Bourke:
We have seen examples of that, and we have seen leadership examples where the C-suite has taken a 25% or 30% pay cut to reduce layoffs. So those things are there. I think it's even more than that, looking at the jobs at that C-suite level to see which of those jobs could be pulled back so that you have some of the senior positions going part-time. After all, it always becomes the labor force that has to work part-time and take the cut, and the labor force usually can't afford to do it because there's not a lot of fat in their budgets. So yeah, it's not just a matter of one person giving out 30 million. It's the C-suite. But everyone lives to their means. That's why it actually becomes difficult.
Lisa Buckingham:
Yeah, and sometimes that could have a blowback on the organization because they're like, "Oh, they made so much money they can do that." But one of the things that we did at Lincoln absolutely to your point was rather than org charts, we used clouds, and we talked about our strategic focus for this organization and where to invest in this one to three-year period. And that was really helpful because then we would know where we were investing at the senior level, which also set us up to do our talent strategies and sit down with the leaders to say, "What do you need in the next three years to achieve this?"
And there were times that digitization was super important, so we had a digital officer, and then we moved and had that in the chief technology officer's responsibility. So there are different ways that you handle it. When you do management delayering, you get more out of an organization from a cost perspective than you do, as you were talking about hitting the production workers. Yeah. So it is provocative, but it's a great question because every organization defines its values and shows its culture by how they respond.
Juliet Bourke:
That's right. In those moments that matter. And this is one of those moments that matter, and we certainly see the organizations that live with integrity or when they don't. It's easier to talk about integrity when things are good.
Lisa Buckingham:
Yeah, and if you listen to any of the Squawk Box or CNN and when CEOs go on, and they're talking about they may have to reduce their workforce, the first thing I think about is that it has to be handled so well.
Juliet Bourke:
Yeah, I agree.
James Kelley:
It's a compassionate reduction.
James Kelley:
Bonus question. There is a labor shortage and a need for more employees. How can we use these uncertain economic times as an opportunity?
Juliet Bourke:
There are still some untapped labor pools, even though you said we've gone down to 14%, down to three in the US, and the same thing has happened in Australia. Those numbers hide untapped labor pools because you don't consider them labor. They're not looking for employment. And I've noticed that we started to look differently because of COVID, people not having to be co-located. So that was an easy one to solve.
But people who have been traditionally overlooked, people with a disability who have lower rates of employment, people who have criminal pasts where that conviction is not relevant to the job they're doing, and even looking at entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs actually have a black mark against them when they look for full-time employment because they think they're not stable or they feel that they're just doing this until they're going to set up their own business again. So there are some pools of labor that we're not going into, and they are not showing up on the figures.
Lisa Buckingham:
I agree with you. And in the '90s, we were talking about off-ramping because people were having children and not just women, but men as well, and folks having families. So, there's an opportunity to open up the aperture of the possibilities. My ask for talent acquisition executives is to get to know the person, and maybe there are different ways to assess talent, not just what's on your resume or your CV.
James Kelley:
To wrap this up, I was thinking about my own situation. Mary, my wife, was the primary caregiver for our four kids over the last 15 years. Mary was reentering the workforce and applying for jobs based on what she previously did in product management. Mary would get to the final two people, and they basically would say, "You don't have enough experience." So being a mom, managing a family of six, that's a project in itself but also a product because you're raising kids, and that skillset isn't rocket science. It's a process, but it's not neurosurgery.
And so I still think this notion of this untapped labor pool you're talking about, moms is an excellent example. However, organizations must work on bringing them into the fold to realize their value quickly. It's not a two-year uptick of upskilling them; it's four to six weeks for most of the jobs to which this individual will return.
And so it's a real shame, and I really applaud the organizations that take on that untapped market and see and realize it because it's brilliant because they're going to work faster, typically. They're better at getting things done. Mary gets more done in four hours than I do in eight every day because she has deadlines she has to get to, a kid has to go here or go there, and a doctor's appointment.
Alright, I want to thank Lisa and Juliet for the help and support for this interview. This is a vast topic, and we can continue for a while. If you want to learn more about qChange, please go to www.qchange.com, or email me at jkelley@qchange.com.