Deja Vu all over again

Deja Vu all over again

by | Oct 25, 2022 | Leadership Agility, Management, Performance Management, Work From Home

We seldom re-run blogs, but recent articles have given us déjà vu! 

Sentiments in last week’s WSJ article, Your Boss Still Thinks You’re Faking It When You’re Working From Home prompted us to write last year’s blog.

Yet approaches highlighted in a recent article from the Washington Post demonstrate how remote work can thrive.

  • ”… shifting to focus on results, … consistently overcommunicates expectations, feedback and context.”
  • “Rather than [basing someone’s] value on them sitting in their seat …I have to make sure the team is delivering what they say they are delivering.”
  • “Intentional about checking in with people and creating opportunities.”
  • “Training middle managers to understand an outcomes-based model of leadership.” In addition,  “… remote work has made her recognize the importance of clearly articulating processes …”

New Trend? Old Trend.

New Trend? Old Trend.

by | May 24, 2022 | Community, Corporate Culture, Economy, Labor Markets, Recruiting

When this headline appeared … what came to your mind?

If you’re from Pennsylvania, did you think of Hershey?

If you’re from Chicago, did you think of Pullman?

Some might have some less-than-charitable thoughts about company housing.

If you are a fan of Cadbury’s chocolate, you might know all about the sweet village that the company constructed for their workers in Bournville, England (which inspired Hershey).  One of Unilever’s predecessors, Lever Brothers, also had a stellar community built for their workers called Port Sunlight.

It seems to be a toss-up to determine where the first company-sponsored housing was built: Quarry Bank Mill (near today’s Manchester airport) or New Lanark in Scotland, were both founded in 1784 and both provided housing and better nutrition than was the norm at the time.  The cottages pictured were built in 1824 as housing for the Quarry Bank Mill near Manchester.

Seems the owner of New Lanark might have devised the original economic development deal as well.  The owner lured a boat load, literally, of people that had been emigrating to North Carolina when their boat crashed.  Stay here, and I’ll give you a job AND housing.   

Seems some things never change …

COLA

COLA

by | May 10, 2022 | Compensation, Economy, Jobs, Labor Markets, Salary Budgets

There’s a word that compensation consultants of a more recent era have shunned for at least two decades:  COLA

And not in favor of the unCola – in favor of NO COLA.

In fact, the consultants at CHRC have spent a fair amount of time explaining the differences between

Merit Budgets

and

COLA – Cost of Living Adjustments

Until their faces turn an unattractive shade of blue.

The phrase that gets economists animated is “wage-price spiral” … and many are turning an unattractive shade of red believing that the current wage increases are going to take the U.S. to the kind of wage-price spiral that the U.S. economy experienced in the 1970s.

So much to our delight, last week Mitchell Hartman on Marketplace did a story that featured the COLA that we don’t like to imbibe.  More importantly, in addition to economists that are convinced we are headed for the spiral, he featured two that pointed out key distinctions of what separates the current situation from that in the 1970s.

Ross Mayfield of Baird points out that unlike the 1970s, the worker’s demands aren’t driving inflation, supply constraints caused by the war in Ukraine and Covid are.  Economist Joe Brusuelas underscores the statistic that undergirds Mr. Mayfield’s point:

“At that time, labor unions represented approximately 1 in 4 American workers.”

Why were those COLAs so worrisome?  They were built right into those union contracts for years at a time, regardless of market conditions. That was a very large factor in the wage-price spiral

How many Americans belong to a union right now?