Week 8: Culture and Gender in a Global Workplace

Culture, social beliefs and norms, ethnic heritage, family up-bringing all affect and shape an employees notion of work, work ethic, and leadership, as well as the understanding of what a business is and its purpose, and how an organization should operate.

A team of scholars have been studing leadership and organizations from a cross-cultural perspective. In the GLOBE study (published in the 2004 book Culture, Leadership, and Organizations), they make the following points about the make up of the global workforce:

Performance Orientation: "the extent to which the organization is focused on ambitious and challenging goals and results and is driven by competition and winning through innovation and performance improvement." "Organizations are a micro version of the society in which it operates....[and]...reflect the culture (practices and values) in the society in which they are embedded....[S]ocietal cultures...influence the nature of leadership." "Societies who...[have a]...strong Performance Orientation tend to...value education and learning, emphasize results, set high performance targets, value taking initiative, and prefer explicit and direct communication....[S]ocieties...[with]...low Performance Orientation...value social and family relations, loyalty, tradition, and seniority, and use subtle and indirect language" (pp276-7).

Future Orientation: "is almost universally valued." Future oriented organizations tend to "be composed of Participative, Humane-Oriented, Team-Oriented, and Charismatic/Valued-Based leadership styles." Future orinted societies prefer a more "Self-Protective leadership" style. "Visionary leadership is endorsed significantly more in Anglo...[countries and]...in the Middle East...authoritarian leadership is commonly more effective...The French often distrust visionary leaders and emphasize bureaucratic rules that minimize the possibilities of any person pushing his or her idiosyncratic view of the future."Societies in the Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia stand out for their high value on Future Orientation, possibly reflecting the high priority they set on spiritual orientation and a holistic view favoring matter that is integrated with spirit on a long-term basis." The societies with "stronger practices of future orientation tend to show better economic and societal health, more scientific advanacement, more democratic political ideas, more empowered gender status, and greater domestic savings. Under such conditions, family and friends may play a less prominent role in the life of people. On the other hand, the aspiration for future orientation are stronger in societies that ahve weak economic and societal health, less scientific advancement, less democratic political ideals, and less empowered gender status. These aspirations...are interrelated with a strong emphasis on family and friends and on spiritual orientation" (pp. 331-334).

Gender Egalitarianism: is "the way in which societies divide roles between women and men." [M]emebers of societies whose practices are currently more gender egalitarian achieved greater longevity, knowledge,, and standards of living....Societies in which manager espoused more gender-egalitarian values were more properous economically....A comparison of societal and organizational levels of Gender Egalitarianism revealed that organizational cultures reflect the culture...in the society in which they are imbedded....[G]ender egalitarian organizations and societies endorsed charismatic leader attributes such as "foresight," "enthusiastic," and "self-sacrificial" and participative leader attributes such as "egalitarian," "delegator," and "collaboratively oriented." These same organizations and societies shunned self-protective leader attributes such as "self-centered,""status-conscious," "secretive," "evasive," and "formal" (pp. 386-388).

Assertiveness: refers to the "extent to which people in...societiesgeberally practice or value assertiveness, aggressiveness, dominence, and toughness or nonassertiveness and tenderness." The "relationship among masculine and feminine practices, values and leadership dimensions is not as straightforward" as once thought. "[P]eople in different geographic areas rate their society differently in terms of how assertive they should be, in contrast to the current state of asseretiveness within the society." In many locations 'people tend to strive for less assertiveness." Only in "Southern Asia and Confusian Asia clusters" people indicated "they want more assertiveness, dominance, and aggression in their relationships with others." Regardining organizations, "Anglo organizations...tend to score high on Assertiveness, which seems consistent with the emphasis in Anglo literature and media on individualism and aggressive attitudes needed to succeed in business." Organizatonal leaders that do not value and practice assertivess have a tendency to endorse particpatory leadership and team oriented leadership. Assertive leaders favor autonomous leadership styles. (pp431-433).

Individualism and Collectivism:

Power Distance:

Humane Orientation:

Uncertainty Avoidance:

Societal Culture and Industrial Sector Influences on Organizational Culture:

Leadership and Cultural Variation

"Societies and organizations that value excellence, superior performance, performance improvement, and innovation will likely seek leaders who exemplify Charismatic/Value-Based qualities, and such leaders are likely to ne effective....[I]f an organization wishes to enhance charismatic/valuebased leadership, they might consider developing an organizational or societal culture that is more performance orientated, organizational collective, gender egalitarian, humane, and future oriented. "[O]rganizational members from gender egalitarian and performance oriented organizations are likely to use participative leadership." "Members of humane organizations value attributes such as concern, sensitivity, friendship, tolerance, and support for others....Performance Orientation values were positively related to Autonomous leadership. Regarding Self-Protective leadership, a general impediment...[to most groups]...Power Distance and Uncertainty Avoidance were strong positive predictors" for leaders who might have this style" (pp. 711-712).

"[T]he scietal and organizational values help delineate cultur-specific boundaries of acceptable, effective leadership behaviors and practices. Leaders who are aware of a culture's values and practices can make conscious, educated decisions regarding their leadership practices and likely effects on the day-to-day operations and crisis management within an organization. Acknowledgement and explanation from aleader to his followers that a customary cultural practice will be breached, and why, can help avoid or diminish problems and complications." Knowledge of cultural diversity and how it impacts the way business is conducted, organizations behave, and leadership is exercised, is "useful for selecting, counseling, and training individualswho work in intercultural environments" (p. 712).

Week 7: Outsourcing

Week 6: Working and Communicating in a Dispersed and Virtual Environment

KSAs for a dispersed workplace...

The key employee knowledge, skills and attitudes (KSAs) when working in a dispersed, technological environment are:

1. Self-management.
2. Virtual communication.
3. Cultural sensitivity.
4. Trust building.
5. Competence in using electronic information systems and communication technology

Social capital a key ingredient...

The first task of a distance manager or virtual team leader is to develop a sense of presence and rapport among the workers or team members, as well as develop a viable community. This takes time. While it may feel not relevant, if the "familiarity" among members does not emerge, it is much harder to develop the respect, trust, and credibility needed to openly engage in honest dialogue, creative decision-making, risk-taking, and close collaboration.

Cohen and Prusak (2001) in In Good Company: How Social Capital Makes Organizations Work state: "Most of us know from experience that trusted colleagues help us to accomplish our work....Most of us know that the experience of working in isolation for any length of time can be lonely and dispiriting. We know too that we are more likely to give energy, talent, and loyalty to an organization if those around us are helpful and honest as opposed to uncooperative and devious, and if leadership of the organization takes a fair and equitable approach to the people who work for it. We know we do better work if we get a chance to know our coworkers rather than continually adjust to a changing roster of team members."These authors further share that social capital is "the norms and social relations embedded in social structures that enable people to coordinate action to achieve desired goals....[It]...refers to features of social organizations such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit....Social capital consists of the stock of active connections among people: the trust, mutual understanding, and shared values and behaviors that bind the members of human networks and communities and make cooperative action possible."

We conduct business and work in a dispersed workplace with telework and virtual teaming as ordinary components of the workplace, and employee work relationships. So how can "social capital" be accomplished in a dispersed and technological work environment? How can "satisfying" and "productive" work be accomplished where people who have to collaborate do not see each other, and often feel like they are working "alone"? How can rapport and team spirit be established and maintained? Ho can an overal organizational culture and identity be developed in a global work environment?

Coaching and community building...

A manager, besides leading and supervising staff members and teams, is also a coach. Because of the feeling of separation and isolation due to the physical distance and limited social interaction, (s)he must consciously work at building a strong feeling of common identity and camaraderie among employees. (S)he must enable them to be feel valued, and see his/her contribution to the organzation, and/or project team. Thus, routine noting of employees contributions and progress, and reward systems are vital.

The manager must build a collaborative workforce and community. Clear workplace work task goals and operational procedures, plus effective communication methods that fit the employees personalities and communication styles are critical. Further, ways for dispersed worplace members to get to know each other by integrating informal phone calls into the work day's activities, and encouraging the sharing of online digital pictures and communications about personal and professional interests are important. Since they cannot "meet each other in the hallways" the dynamics of that experience has to be created in a "virtual manner."

These are not easy mangerial task, and there are not ready answers to resolve questions or challenging issues. But it is a challenge that we have to accept and face, because we have already developed an economy and business structure based upon a globalized strategy.

Professionals and scholars have been grappling with this issue for awhile, and virtual teams are working, and becoming more successful. But why? Are people changing? Is technology getting better? Is the organizational structure shifting, and the workforce adapting? Is the nature of teams evolving?

Chuck Piazza

Week 5b: The Relationship Between Customer Satisfaction and Employee Management

In Human Sigma: Managing the Employee-Customer Encounter, Fleming and Asplund (2007) articulate important insights about the relationship between successful customers service and effective employee management.

To begin, they point that every employee-customer interaction "is a change for something to go wrong" (p.17). Further, why would a business "trust its employees enough to put them toe-to-toe with its most valuable assets--its customers--every day, but not trust them enough to allow them to make independent decisions that might enable them to serve their customers more effectively" (P. 18)?

In light of this observation, they constructed a notion of HumanSigma whose key principles are:

• Rule 1: You cannot measure and manage employee and customer experiences as separate entities.
• Rule 2: Emotion frames the employee-customer encounter.
• Rule 3: You must measure and manage the employee-customer encounter at a local level.
• Rule 4: We can quantify and summarize the effectiveness of the employee-customer encounter in a single performance measure--the HumanSigna metric--that is powerfully related to financial performance.
• Rule 5: Improvement in local HumanSigma performance requires deliberate and active intervention through attention to a combination of transactional and transformational intervention activities--how companies implement action plans and training, as well as select employees and managers, compensate and evaluate employees, implement succession planning, etc.

This notion again illustrates centrality of people to organizational success, and the inter-relationship between organizational trust and value of employees, a talent management organizational culture, the "right people in the right job," and a respectful and empowering manager.

How can managers who have to lead and supervise at a distance engage with their employees in such a manner? How can employees be enabled to thoughtfully (being well informed) and prudently make decisions on their own, as needed?

Chuck Piazza

Week 5: Enaging Employees Locally and Globally

From showing up for a job to being committed and passionate about work...

In the 90s, the Gallup organization identified an important insight--employee engagement is a fundamental organizational quality for workforce performance, and most companies do not have a conscious understanding of how to get employees routinely engaged. So they set out to articulate what employee engagement is, and how to manage in a manner that fosters high levels of engagement.

"Worker commitment is by no means the sole cause of success....But the evidence is clear that the creation and maintainence of high employee engagement, as one of the few determinants of profitability largely with in a company's control, is one of the most crucial imperatives of any successful organization...Because of the financial consequences of worker commitment, no executive can fully discharge...[his/her]...fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders while ignoring it" (Wagner and Harter, 2006, p. xvi)


"Many executives struggle to formulate a strategy for increasing profits through their employees. Often they resort to the simple arithmetic of fewer employees = lower costs, without considering the wide range in productivity that depends on each person's engagement."...Staff motivation, although difficult to quantify, should be part of the investment analysis" (p. xiii).

In 12: The Elements of Great Managing, Wagner and Harter (2006) spell out the key aspects for a worker to trust in their company of employement, and to be able to perfrom well. They are:

1. I know what is expected of me at work.
2. I have the material and equipment I need to di my work right.
3. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
4. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
5. My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
6. There is someone at work who encourages my development.
7. At work, my opinions seem to count.
8. The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.
9. My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.
10. I have a best friend at work.
11. In the last six weeks, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
12. This last year, I have had opportunities to learn and grow.

As they state, "Behind each of these...[statements]...is a fundamental truth about human nature on the job. The correlations between each element and better performance not only draw roadmap to superior managing; they also reveal fascinating insights into how the human mind...reacts in a relatively new, artificial world of cubicles, projects timelines, corporate ambiguity, and constantly changing workgroup membership."

They continue: "People neither were created to fit corporate strategies nor have evolved to do so. Rather than contest these facts, the ,ost successful managers harness the drive, virtuosity, and spirit that come with employing humans, even as they understand the inevitable chinks in their armor" (p. xi-xii).

Pfeffer (1998), in The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First advocates that companies can better stay competitive by "centering...on maintaining people and developing their skills and competencies" (p. 18). People are to "put first" (p. 304); and organizations are to operate as if people mattered: Capital and Machinary Make It Possible--People Make IT Happen" (p. 305". He list seven practices of successful companies:

1. Employment security.
2. Selective hiring of new personnel.
3. Self-managed teams and decentralization of decision-making as basic principles of organizational design.
4. Comparatively high compensation contingent on organizational performance.
5. Extensive training.
6. 6. Reduced status distinctions and barriers, including dress, language, office arrangements, and wage differences across levels.
7. Extensive sharing of financial and performance information throughout the organization (pp. 64-65).

With this said, the challenge is how do these principles apply to and get implemented in a

• business arena where organizations need to continuously evolve and adapt--make shifts, grow and shrink, etc.,
• a technological and global work environment that is comprised of staffs and teams that are spread around the world, comprised of individuals and leaders from many cultures, and are networked via electronic communication and collaboration systems?

How does a company created a unified corporate identity? How do managers enable employee engagement across cultures in a dispersed workplace?

How is company loyalty expressed and job security offered in a workforce that is increasining needing workers on a contingent basis?

What is employment stability today, and how is it obtained? What are its core characteristics? How do employees develop careers in such a complex, shifting and ambiguous workplace?

What is succession planning in today's workplace? How can organizations and managers assist employees to develop their careers so they can aid the company to have the needed leaders and staff members, and help employees professionall grow and develop?

Chuck Piazza

Week 4: The Global Workforce and the Contingent Worker

This week's conversation will be about challenging styles of employment,

as well as issues that workers and managers face.

Companies, large and small, do not need nor can utilize employees in the same manner as they did in the 1980s and 1990s.


Agile, Flexible Organizational Structure and Workforce: Businesses must be able to grow or expand as needed, as well as make changes and shrink when needed. Because the organization is not static, its workforce cannot be either. The number of employees needed, and the worker skill set required by the company changes as the company productline, economic climate, and target markets change. With businesses needing to be flexible, so must the worker and employment positions.

Recent changes in the structure of employer organizations, the nature of work and jobs, and the terms of the evolving employment contract add up to a radically tranformed American workplace. As the hierarchical, bureaucratic, and monolithic manufacturing corporation has given way to dynamic new forms of business organizations, traditional notions of jobs and careers have disappeared. What has emerged is a complex new set of relationships between
employers and employees. In general, if yesterday's working conditions were characterized by stability, predictability, and security, to day's world of work
is about variety, choice and change... (O'Toole and Lawler, 2006, p. 78).

The flexible workplace has given rise to the contingent employee, a worker who is hired on a temporary, part-time, or contract basis. This is in contrast to regular or full-time, full-year employment (O'Toole and Lawler, 2006, p.75).

There are also leased employees, i.e., individual workers or an organization's entire workforce provided by a human resource company.

Hybrid Organization:Business enterprises are distributed nationally and/or globally with the workforce networked via electronic information systems, mobile devises, and collaborative platforms.

Employees,

• As individuals and teams, work in both face-to-face and virtual environments, and must be able to fluidly move in and out of both environments.
• Must have the ability to self-manage themsleves as well as work collaborative, be able to work autonomously as well as follow directives, work with ambiguity as well as clear goals and mandates.
• Must be able to problem-solve and make decisions and act decisively.
• Must take leadership roles, take accountability, and be responsible.
• Must be comfortable with technology and able to use it innovatively to access and analyze information, communicate, generate knowledge, and work as a team.
• Be comfortable in a multicultural and inter-cultural workplace, i.e., understand and be confortable with a. Different cultural understandings of work, authority, protocal, time, leadership, acountability, respect, appreciation and reward systems, compensaton, work ethic, ethical codes, and humor, and b. Must be open-minded, patient, and accepting of difference.

What challenges and issues do you think that these forms of employment pose to managers and employors?

How does the worker have to refashion or reconceptualize his/her way of understanding work, seeking employment, and establishing a career?

Chuck Piazza

Week 3: Fashioning an International Human Resource Management Vision

To begin there is a difference between personnel management and human resource management.

While there is no "clear agreed upon distinction" between the two, personnel management is primarily concerned with staffing (i.e., recruiting, hiring,), determining job decription, developing and informing about compensation and benefit packages, applying employement laws and regulations, aiding in performance evaluations, handling work greviences, etc.

Human resource management (HRM) or human resource development (HRD) is about having the "right people" in the "right jobs." It is about managing and developing talent, and enabling managers to lead and empower their staffs and teams in accord with the organization's mission an goals. It is about developing the resourceness of employees, aligning their talents with the organization's culture and objectives, developing leadership capabilities, increasing productivity, and unleashing innovation.

Often both of these functions exist in an enterprises Human Resource Management Department.
In my opinion, the Human Resource Department has both the business enterprise and the employees as "clients." It must be "loyal to" and an advocate for both the organization and its workforce. While it must safeguard interests and the investments of the company, it must also create a safe, fair, and humane work environment that justly compensates and rewards workers.

Both personnel management and human resource management are challenging. Check out the HRM Guide for current issues.

The Human Resource Department, in working with executives, company leaders, managers and staffs, must provide value add to the business enterprise. The practice of human resource management, in actuality is a "decentralized" function. While there may be a VP for human resource management, and a department, it is the responsibility of all managers to "manage" personnel, develop employee skills and potential, foster success planning, coach team members, encourage training, etc.

Some key points to keep in the fore front of your mind regarding an empowering and employee-centric perspective of human resource management:

Employees...

1. Are talented human resources that need to be place in the "right" position, and continuously developed over time.

2. Need to be adaptable, continuously learning, and able to work in a variety of settings, as well as take leadership roles appropriate for their job and position.

3. Need to feel part of the company, be valued, feel authentically appreciated, and be acknowledged for their insights, service, and contributions.

4. Must take ownership of their jobs and the business enterprise's quality and success, expect to give feedback on organizational operations, their jobs, and "leader-managers," and have a open and safe work environment in which to provide honest feedback and suggestions.

5. Must be able to find ways to set work-life boundaries, and establish a balance between work and life so they remain healthy and can meet their personal and civic responsibilites.

Managers...

1. Need to develop open and honest working relationships with their employees and teams.

2. Need to coach or mentor employees, and strive to empower them, allowing them to do their best work, and aiding them to stretch beyond their present knowledge, skill, and capability levels, and grow into appropriate leadership and job positions.

3. Must be able to work collaboratively with colleagues and staffs.

4. Must be able to engage employees develop their loyalty, commitment and work pride, as well as encourage and accept well-founded feedback, and be able to implement valuable insights and suggestions as applicable.

Organizations...

1. Need to be both diverse and inclusive, and draw upon the creativity and innovation that comes from diverse leaders and staff members working together from diverse viewpoints and ideas.

2. Have adaptive and flexible work schedules that are created in an open dialogue between managers, staff members and team members.

3. Be structured so employees can be cross-trained, and rotate jobs.

4. Provide satisfying and meaningful work opportunities, and enable employees to develop and advance their careers.

5. Understand performance "appraisals" not merely as evaluations but methods for employee growth, and organizational development


In a dispersed workplace and with a global workforce, such practices demand leaders to establish organizational cultures, human resource philosophies, management practices, and operational procedures that:

1. Can effectively enable managers to lead at a distance, and build working relationships across time zones and national borders, and cultural, ethnic, language barriers.

2. Be sensitive to and respectful of differences, and value the insights and creativity that arises from diversity of worldviews, values, lifestyles, leadership perspectives, etc.

3. Acknowlwdge and address prejudice that is part of organizational structures, management styles and practices, cultural traditions, work and career development perspectives, etc.

4. Be creative, and willing to break traditional ways of structuring businesses, engaging workers in collaborative or team-oriented processes, enabling employees to network and communicate in order to get their job done, hiring employees and staffing departments, teams and projects, and enable employees to be an integral component of the organization.

5. Tranform the organization into a spirited workplace community that is comprised of leaders and employees from around the world--a global workforce.

Now, with a business enterprise's functional units distributed around the world, an increase in companies being a configuration of business partnerships with other companies, and components of business functions being outsourced or off-shored, HRM must be understood from an international perspective.

How do you think that empowering, employee-centric human resource management prespectives can be accomplished in a globally distributed, and culturally diverse business enterprise? What do you think are the challenges of creating an international HRM vision and set of principles?

Chuck Piazza

Week 2: Identifying Some Workforce Trends

The 21st century workforce is radically different from that of the 1980s, and even the 1990s. Ecomonic patterns, business final goals, employee career aspirations, and technology developments and applications begun in the 1970 and 1980s, and fueled in the 1990s have given rise to the global economy, the dramatically new distributed business enterprise, the networked knowledge worker, and global workforce. Today's work environment is more complex and demanding.

For many, particularly those with higher paying positions, the workplace is not confined to 4 office walls, or the company building.

1. The entire world is one's potential market.

2. The business arena is highly competitive, and unyielding. Having the largest portion of the market share while spending the least amount of money is the goal, and strategy.

3. Work has become a primary focus for many workers, particularly executives and managers. Others, because of having low paying jobs, must hold multiple jobs. Both often work 24/7 with health, families and society paying the cost.

4. Business' are information-driven, with work moving from manual labor focused, to knowledge based. Even "blue collar" employees have to know how to locate and process information. Work is about processing information, and locating, sharing, analyzing, generating, and applying knowledge innovatively to problems and situations.

5. Being comfortable with technology, and skilled at how to use it creatively is now a required job skill.

6. Work stability comes with being in control of one's own employment. It is not about having one job or place of employment, but a portfolio of jobs and employers that one works with on an as needed basis. It is not about employment, but employability.

7. Speed and productivity are core characteristics of today's notion of work. More and more employees, though at times nervous about their future, are stepping into lower paying positions to have meaningful, fulling and personally purposeful work.

8. Technology, particularly information and communication systems (ICS), the business enterprise, management, teams, and employees are intimately connected and can never be separated again.

The nature of work is changing. How would you describe the current notion of work?

Chuck Piazza

Week 1: Getting the Conversation Rolling/The American Workforce.

Again, welcome to Leading a Global Workforce. During these next 11 weeks it will be important to be aware of what is occuring in your own workplace, as well as what is taking place in the news. Also, it will be important to examine your own assumptions and preferences about what make a work environment productive, healthy, and meaning.

So, for now, just "cruise" around the course site, and get to know the direction that this course will take, and the issues it will explore. Read the assigned articles for this week.

I will write more in this blog later this week.

To get you thinking, here is a quote to reflect upon:

Decades of research establish the fact that three major human needs can be satisfied by gainful employment: 1) the need for the basic economic resources and security essential to lead good lives; 2) need to do meaningful work and the opportunity to grow and develop as a person; and 3) the need for supportive social relationships. (The New American Workplace (2006). J. O'Toole & E. Lawler)

Why do you work?

Chuck Piazza


Week 1, Part II: Taking a Look at the American Workplace--Some Current Trends

There is no doubt, the 21st century workplace will be vastly different than that of the late 1990s. Many researchers are trying to chart these changes, exploring the shifts taking place in the American workforce, and discussing how to address the challenges they pose.

Some conclusions raised by James O'Toole and Edward E. Lawler III in their 2006 book The New American Workplace are:

1. Insufficient creation of new jobs. As manufacturing jobs disappear, "new, higher-value-added, higher-paying service-sector jobs" should be appearing. The expected volume of such new jobs has not occurred.

2. Increased choice and risk. Workers today face a wider array of choices than ever before, choices concerning what career to pursue, how much and what form of education to obtain, where to work, how to mesh work with other aspects of life, when to change jobs and careers, how to make trade-offs among benefits, and when, or if, to retire.

3. Increased influence of competitive and economic drivers. The decisions employers make about the pay, benefits, and working conditions they offer are increasingly driven by competitive and financial considerations.

4. Increased tension between work and family life. Men and women in all categories of employment—front line, technical, managerial, and professional—cite a desire for greater balance between work and other aspects of life, particularly their family lives.

5. Mismatch between skills and business needs. The primary and secondary educational system in the US is failing to provide the skills millions of workers need to escape minimum-wage and dead-end employment.

6. Increased social stratification based largely on educational attainment. Related to the problems in education are signs of increasing workforce stratification, with clear winners and losers and decreasing economic mobility. In terms of real wages, executives and technically skilled workers have fared spectacularly in recent years, and college graduates, in general, have relatively fared well. Blue-collar workers, though, have significantly lagged behind their educated and white-collar peers.

7. Changing nature of careers. The traditional career path of completing one’s education and then working for a single organization until retirement is all but disappeared. Individuals expect to work for multiple employers, to move back and forth between work and education and between work and family responsibilities, and perhaps, never retire.

8. Reduction in community commitment. New employment contracts and the high rate of employee turnover have reduced the opportunity for workers to satisfy their needs for belonging to supportive workplace communities.

9. Shortcoming of the healthcare system. The major public policy issue related to work in America today is the nation’s long-standing and unaddressed healthcare crisis. While many workers have no healthcare, concerns abouth health insurance coverage limit the mobility of workers and create dysfunctional tension between labor and management.

10. The boomer demographic imperative. Depending on public and private choices that must be made soon, in the near future there may be (a) a shortage of skilled workers, (b) a shortage of for older workers who cannot afford to retire, (c) a rapid decline in the demand for goods and services as boomers retire with insufficient incomes, (d) steady economic growth as boomers continue to make economic contributions well into their 70s and 80s, (e) the end of retirement as we know it, (f) a demand for increased immigration, or (g) all, some, or none the above.

11. Unrealized opportunities to make more effective use of human capital. Current workplace practices, such as the use of contingent and part-time workers, preferences for younger over older workers, underfunding of training, growing gaps between the salaries and benefits of executives and average employees, and a 24/7 working environment, appear to be having negative effects on worker turnover, motivation, loyalty, and job satisfaction. Yet there exist a number of underutilized workplace “best practices”: flexible working hours, company-sponsored tuition reimbursement, benefit for part-timers, employee participation in decision-making and profit sharing, the redesigning of jobs to make them challenging, and the providing of on-the-job developmental opportunities.

So, in light of your professional experience:

• How do you understand or interprete these findings?
• Which to you agree with? Why?
• What workforce trends do you see? What are the causes of these trends? What are the ramification of these trends?

I'm interested in your insights.

Chuck Piazza