by Kate Evert | Oct 12, 2022 | Human Capital, Leadership, Skilled Labor
Checking twitter for some of our favorite labor economists, the app declared that Jerry Orbach was trending.
Jerry Orbach?
Hasn’t he been gone for several years? But funny enough, I had just been talking about how much I loved his portrayal of Lenny Briscoe on “Law and Order”. I had once seen an old clip and knew he was a triple threat and Broadway star. He could:
Act
Dance
Sing
Poor Angela Lansbury. In mourning her death yesterday, fans started sharing and posting a clip of her recording the soundtrack for “Beauty and the Beast”. The fact that she shared the booth with Jerry Orbach is what has gone viral.
It seems few knew about his hidden talents. Well, hidden on TV that is.
What secret talents do your employees have? Have you pigeon-holed them into a current role, or perhaps a predecessor did? Do you know what sorts of roles they have performed before? What kind of transferable skills they might have?
Don’t wait until a talented member of your ensemble is gone to find out all that they have done or could do. Take them to lunch and find out now. I think Lumiere would have said,
“Be our Guest”
by Kate Evert | Sep 1, 2022 | Human Capital, Jobs, Skilled Labor, Work Place
Labor Day evokes many images. For some of us, it’s a time to savor the last days at the beach, perhaps with a good read?
Most of us hope to find meaning and purpose in our jobs. In this era of The Great Reassessment, maybe this is the Labor Day to reconsider our own toil? Or that of our colleagues?
Here are three suggestions to spark your own contemplation:
This podcast introduced me to Dr. Mike Rose, who was a professor of education at UCLA. He wrote The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker. In an excerpt from the podcast, he reflects on the concept of meaningful work:
So let’s then bust this notion of meaningfulness open, … regardless of the kind of work, to be able to support a family or put food on the table, that’s meaningful. … So for her, then, in the midst of this difficult work and difficult circumstances, there was great meaning in the kind of social dimension of it, right?
Conversely, you and I both know people who are doing work that the culture at large, from a distance, would say is really meaningful — and they’re miserable.
… They’re as unhappy as can be. You know, the miserable lawyer, the unhappy neurosurgeon … So meaningfulness is a more fluid and rich and variable concept, I think, than we tend to imagine.
In Dr. Rose’s book, he references Stud Terkel’s American Classic: Working: People talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do. This 600+ page book is something we all should have picked up in quarantine! In the introduction, the author says:
“It is about a search, too, for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash.”
Some industrious folks found Stud’s original reel-to-reel tapes and distilled the best of them into an hour-long podcast. These snippets from the 1970s are both time capsule and insight into what gets folks out of bed in the morning.
Lastly, a book published about a decade ago by a modern-day philosopher, Alain de Botton. The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work questions how some professions can be so admired, yet how we overlook those that accomplish remarkable feats.
As goodreads summarizes it:
We spend most of our waking lives at work–in occupations often chosen by our unthinking younger selves. And yet we rarely ask ourselves how we got there or what our occupations mean to us.
… With a philosophical eye and his signature combination of wit and wisdom, Alain de Botton leads us on a journey around a deliberately eclectic range of occupations, from rocket science to biscuit manufacture, accountancy to art–in search of what make jobs either fulfilling or soul-destroying.
All good fodder to ponder as the summer winds down, and we head back to work, possibly with renewed vigor about our own vocations.
by Kate Evert | Feb 22, 2022 | Competencies, Diversity, Economy, Hiring, Human Capital, Innovation, Jobs, Labor Markets, Recruiting
Our February musings have encouraged looking beyond your own environment — whether a groundhog emerging to see his shadow, imagining beyond deep snow drifts to the intricate physics of a single flake, and now urging you to gaze at STARs …
STARs is an acronym for Skilled Through Alternative Routes.
The Burning Glass Institute recently published The Emerging Degree Reset. While employers are finally understanding that eliminating the degree requirement for some of their jobs will give them access to a broader labor pool, there will be a burden as well:
“A reset requires employers to be more articulate about the skills they require for the job”
Article after article on this topic concedes that employers have used the degree requirement as a proxy for the competencies that they assume a college degree imparts, versus articulating or probing for those behaviors in the interview process.
How many more workers?
In a recent story on Marketplace, Papia Debroy, who leads research at the nonprofit Opportunity@Work said:
“There are more than 70 million workers in our U.S. labor force today who are skilled through alternative routes — through community college, through military service. Most often they’re learning on the job…”
If you’re wondering what sort of employers might be looking for STARs, the piece interviews Jimmy Etheredge, CEO of Accenture North America, who is an advocate.
“The assumption has always been, ‘I need to look for people that have a technical background, and then the easier thing to teach is the soft skills,’” “It’s easier to teach them the technology, and they already have amazing skills for doing client-customer interaction,” Etheredge said.
If you’ve ever seen a detailed image depicting the crystal structure of a snowflake, it didn’t come from a college graduate. Those photos taken under a microscope in the bitter cold were taken by a farmer nicknamed Snowflake Bentley who had all the competencies like curiosity, initiative, and determination – but lacked the technical tool to capture the images. Once armed with that technology, the sky was his limit, and his laboratory.
by Kate Evert | Feb 8, 2022 | Data, Economy, Future of Work, Human Capital, Inspiration, Labor Markets
… by all of the recent jobs data.
In an attempt to make any sense of all of the swirling data, I listened to a recent podcast by The Economist which showcased a few employers in Buffalo, New York. Some companies there are willing to hire for potential: people that they know can do the work but lack specific skills, so they are willing to train them.
In recent decades, as the Baby Boomers flooded the labor market, the days of investing in employees and training seemed to evaporate. Too few organizations were willing to invest in employee training, and seemed reluctant to hire based on competencies or a person’s distinctive combination of experiences and skills that could contribute to an enterprise.
If there is one thing you think of when you hear Buffalo, it is SNOW. During the podcast, I began to think of Snowflake Bentley, a children’s book, with art so captivating that it won the coveted Caldecott Medal for its illustrations in 1999.
Snowflake Bentley’s parents didn’t treat him the same as every other farm boy; they encouraged his curiosity and invested in his interest to study nature – especially the elusive quest to photograph something that could melt in an instant.
Like snowflakes, no two humans are alike. The labor markets right now are about as fierce as the snowstorms that Snowflake Bentley braved for his research. The companies that will weather this storm are those that understand what core elements are essential to making someone successful at their organization. Then, if they believe in the potential of the people they hire, invest in them and their raw talent, and reward them not only with compensation, but with increasingly interesting assignments, those organizations need not be adrift.
by Kate Evert | Feb 2, 2022 | Covid-19, Future of Work, Human Capital, Inspiration, Pivoting, Productivity, Strategy
Those of us of a certain age, grew up when Groundhog Day only meant one thing: one day in February when kids, especially, waited to see if there was a chance of an early spring.
Since the early 1990s, the phrase has taken on a new meaning, a day that seems to repeat over and over again … without end. In the spirit of that NEW meaning, we are rerunning last year’s February 2 Blog …
If Covid had a mascot, it would be the groundhog, at least in the United States. Various animals in different northern regions have stuck their necks out to foretell if winter is over. Every year on February 2, many cultures look for a sign that winter might end.
Recently, a podcast caught my attention; hadn’t hit start, hadn’t heard of the book, but who wouldn’t keep listening about a book called Wintering when it is January in the snowy North? The author, Katherine May, read a passage:
“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt.”
Suddenly you recall an Aesop’s fable, of the Ant and the Grasshopper. One creature is busy storing food for the cold weather, one plays in the sun and does not. You probably first heard this tale at about the age of five, and Aesop wrote, or at least recorded it, 5,000 years ago.
In her interview, the author says she feels that Covid has been one L O N G Wintering. Many of us have forgotten how to winter—how to store away preserves in our cellars for the seasons in which the harvests are not plentiful. Companies either don’t retain earnings for a rainy day or are pressured to pay them out to shareholders.
This February 2, the groundhog represents us emerging from our Covid Hibernation, looking for hope, an efficient vaccine distribution system, some semblance of normal. As we all know we will have at least six more weeks of Covid Winter, but perhaps we can resolve to prepare a bit more for our next “wintering”—whatever it may be—so that we might be more prepared, like the ant, and not have to go underground, like the groundhog.
by Kate Evert | Nov 30, 2021 | Community, Human Capital, Inspiration, Leadership, Management, Sacrifice
Many of us have probably spent the last week or so reflecting on the things that we are thankful for … I wonder how many of us went beyond food, clothing, and shelter to spare a few moments for the mentors in our life?
Some of us have been blessed with amazing mentors. The extremely lucky have been blessed with several outstanding mentors. Recently, a group of fortunate people assembled to celebrate the life of an amazing man who had been an outstanding one to so many – from attorneys to adolescents to apprentice advocates.
Without ever having met the man, I was nevertheless touched by all I heard and reflected upon what his mentorship had meant for so many, including many people I know. Without his generosity, one of my high school classmates wouldn’t have sat in front of me, class after class, and probably wouldn’t be a doctor today. Without his tutelage, many a current judge wouldn’t be on the bench, meting out just justice. Today there are businesspeople, not-for-profit leaders, and educators, who pursue their life’s work influenced by his work ethic, wisdom, and wit. It seems that this gifted, good, and generous man understood the part that luck and a break or two had played in his own life and felt that others were entitled to the same. For so many assembled, they credited his influence that started at a very young age, many times as their after-school job in high school.
We tend to think that a mentor comes later in life, as part of a formal workplace program. Tim Ryan, current US Chair of PwC, often tells a pivotal story in his life, career journey, and management approach – that came from his boss at his high school job in a grocery store. That only reinforces how early these lessons CAN be learned, and perhaps SHOULD be learned.
As this crazy year comes to an end, here’s hoping that you have time to reflect on a mentor or two in your own life. If you haven’t been lucky enough to ever have one, or an amazing one, perhaps resolve to become one for someone else? It might be that break, that chance, that bit of luck, that changes their outlook … or even the outcome of their life.
