Stress Insurance Against New HR Technology—Start Your Own Business

Here's an idea that is SO NOT RIGHT:

You work in a solid industry requiring personal contact, you have been there for over three years, so you are safe from firing or layoff.
Don't count on it! You are almost as ripe for job termination as someone in customer service (which doesn't require personal contact).
 
Why?

More and more HR departments are now using data-mining programs to streamline their work. Using this new software (from Oracle Corp., SAS Institute, Inc., and SPSS, Inc.and others), employers can manipulate employee data regarding age, salary, tenure, department, absences, individual performance reviews, and other factors to calculate loyalty.

Though we're in a temporary era of job shortages, there are only a very few years remaining until employers everywhere will be faced with an acute shortage of trained workers. Loss of large numbers of "baby boomers" and delaying marriage and motherhood to pursue careers all contribute to this looming shortage. Retaining people will become a prime HR mission. By manipulating employee data, HR departments may discover people about to jump ship and trigger methods to keep them.

Just as easily, the information could be used to create a priority job list of potential workers leaving. When a qualified candidate appears, employers might be likely to hire them and then do whatever is needed to encourage the potential quitter to go ahead and quit.

A recent article on the website of KForce Professional staffing says the U.S. average of time an employee stays with one employer is 2.7 years. This is reinforced by another report by the University of Maryland at Baltimore saying much the same thing. So, if you have been employed more than two years, it appears your job may be in jeopardy if your employer is using one of these data-mining programs. If a qualified applicant shows up, your employer could very well decide to go ahead and hire someone who will be around for another two or three years because you seem to have been there long enough to be thinking of leaving.

The list could also be used when considering someone for promotion or a salary raise. Would an employer treat someone high on the quit list for any new perks? If they are going to quit anyway, what is the advantage of granting a raise or promotion?

Employers will be using employee data to devise ways of keeping desirable employees. An article in the April 2004 issue of Inc. magazine says 38% of managers, supervisors, and team leaders are planning to quit as soon as they find a suitable job. That's two out of every five of the most important people in a company. Many of these people were forced to take their current jobs because of firings and layoffs in their former companies. They took what they could find with much lower salaries and benefits. Many of these people have been continuously networking and floating resumes everywhere to find something better.

This presents another problem. A lot of economists are now saying the result of massive outsourcing overseas will result in downward levels of pay even for those jobs which remain or may be created in the future. After all, this is the nature of competition. Therefore, it may be these would-be job hoppers won't be able to find anything better, and they will just stay where they are. What's left are two out of five critical employees who are now basically very unhappy.
To compound this situation, hundreds of thousands of unemployed people who were discouraged from seeking work are re-entering the job market—just more downward pressure on salaries.

HR departments are being called upon to use whatever methods they can find to at least keep these unhappy people on the job and as productive as possible. One technique to get ever more from human assets is the increasing use of psychological tests as discussed in Inc. magazine, June 2004. Such tests, including the Test of Attentional and Interpersonal Style (TAIS), the Birkman, or the Caliper test, are often used . These are supposed to tell senior management how best to motivate and direct the employees they have.
That said, these tests may also turn up a few faithful and loyal employees with fewer desireable qualities than managers would like. Do you suppose these employees might be in danger of losing their jobs?

This is another way of placing pressure on human assets (us, people, employees) to perform at a higher level. Productivity is what drives a growing economy, and human assets must be increasingly more productive just like any other asset. But how much can a person do before they burn out?
At the very least, these programs could be considered an invasion of privacy and an extension of Orwell's "Big Brother" idea. They place employees under ever increasing scrutiny and give employers another tool to increase control over their workforce.

Currently, the high cost of $100,000+ on data mining software has prohibited its use for most small businesses. But less expensive products will quickly be developed that are affordable for smaller enterprises...and here may be the basis for an entrepreneur to purchase a program and become a consultant for several small clients. In every tragedy, there IS a corresponding opportunity.
Yet another technology designed to de-humanize the job application process is "applicant management" software. In this low-job-availability era, the number of applicants is nearly overwhelming for many HR departments. So they have developed ways to do away with all but the perfect candidates.

How do they do this? Large numbers of job hopefuls now use the Internet to apply for jobs. So employers have begun to cut down on resume information by only allowing an applicant to answer specific questions devised by the employer. To eliminate most of the desperate job seekers, HR departments are turning to software, such as BrassRing, Peopleclick, and Recruitsoft.

These and similar programs not only manage the application volume, they also reduce fees paid to employment agencies and headhunters, including online sources like Monster. Companies view such software as ways to increase productivity of the HR function. Only allowing specific questions with no way to add comments about abilities you have that aren't covered by the questions reduces the chance for most job seekers. Prospective employees use the Internet in hopes of quickly finding new employment. It's not going to happen.

One more innovation affecting employees and prospective employees is increasing use of credit reports as information sources about employees. This could affect current employees as well as prospects.
Why does an employer care about my credit report?

Here are a few reasons:
1. Poor credit may indicate a potential thief.
2. An employee with credit problems may be so distracted their productivity is not as expected by the employer.
3. An employee with a lot of debt showing, even if there is no unsatisfactory information, may be considered unproductive because of preoccupation with financial problems.
4. Personal information like birth date, address, or marital status may not agree with an employee's application. This could indicate an employee has lied about their background.

Credit reports are kept on virtually every American citizen and are easily available to organizations doing background checks on current or prospective employees. We've all heard horror stories about "identity theft". But many errors occur just because of some reporting mistake. According to a recent report from CNN/Money and conducted by PIRG, a consumer group, 25% of credit reports contain errors that could keep people from obtaining loans or getting a job and 79% of credit reports in the sample had some kind of error.

As an employee or job applicant you need to take some of the same precautions advised to prevent "identity theft." The primary defense is to obtain a report at least once a year from each of the three major credit reporting agencies in the U.S. The URL for each credit bureau is listed in the "SOURCES" section at the end of this article. Last time I checked, my address was listed on one report as that of my ex-wife of 12 years ago, an address I had no idea about!

Be sure to check your reports now; it's worth whatever small cost there may be!

Keep in mind that this article is not meant to imply that any of these ideas and techniques being used by employers is immoral or illegal...but perhaps they should be. Speding years in Human Resources departments drove home to me the true function of this department in every organization—to acquire the best human assets for the company to use as it sees fit at the very smallest cost to the organization...period!

A lot of things can happen during a life. Poor health, downsizing, outsourcing, high malpractice insurance, an unfortunate lawsuit, anything you can't imagine may happen. Your extra income sources will be your insurance against all the misfortunes. You don't have to quit what you are doing. Just develop something on the side. It may never take the place of a full-time job, but it sure will help if (or when) a calamity falls or "technology" catches up with you.

Why not do something that produces profits for you rather than for your employer?