Image credit: candrews and Sarah and Nic

Does the economic slowdown or whatever you want to call it really translate to a shortage of jobs or is something else going on?

In the Northwest it seems that the problem isn’t jobs, it’s what people are willing to do.

“Steve Klein [general manager of Snohomish County PUD faces the stubborn problem getting young people to accept a job that starts at $55,000 a year… and journeyman’s wages of $72,000 a year. Last year 20 percent of the 15,000 or so workers in the utility industry were between the ages of 50 and 65, according to Employment Security.”

And it’s not just lineman,

“There’s so much work out there, we can’t get enough guys,” said ironworker John Lake. The prevailing wage in Snohomish County for journeyman ironworkers is $47.92 an hour nearly $100,000 a year although the work is seasonal.”

John Mohr, who runs the Port of Everett, “thinks the reason unions are struggling is a shift in the Northwest’s strong cultural tradition of organized labor. “A lot of people believe if you’re not working for Microsoft, you’re not part of the American success story.”

In the Midwest it’s more a case of jobs one place and people another.

“A survey of companies by Iowa Workforce Development, a state agency, found as many as 48,000 job vacancies, in industries including financial services… One estimate projects the job surplus to reach 198,000 by 2014, with vacancies increasingly in professional positions…”

“Iowa’s surplus arises from colliding trends: the exodus of young college graduates, a state economy that adds 2,000 jobs a month, low immigration and birth rates, and an image problem that makes it difficult to recruit workers from out of state.”

Is it really that the trades are “beneath” the Millennials? Does an un-hip location have to lead to a lack of skilled workers?

Does what’s happening in Iowa and Washington provide a look into the future as Boomers retire over the next ten years?

“Estimates of the national shortage run as high as 14 million skilled workers by 2020, according to widely cited projections by the labor economists Anthony P. Carnevale and Donna M. Desrochers.”

What do you think?

Before you start grabbing all that great advice and slapping it willy-nilly on your company you need to take stock.

Take a step back and honestly look at your company’s culture and at yourself. This step is critical because you can’t change something of which you aren’t aware or that you don’t understand.

Make no mistake, whatever company culture you find is directly a product of your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™)—whether you actively instigated it or enabled it through neglect.

To form an accurate picture of your culture you can’t just talk to your senior staff—you need a 360 degree vision of it, which means input from all levels of your company. If you’ve allowed yourself to become isolated, basing your decisions on what may be filtered information, you’ve found the first thing you need to change—and you need to accept that it’s not going to be easy.

First, look to yourself.

• Why and how did you allow it to happen?
• How long has it been going on?
• How valid or how filtered is the information you do get?
• Who is standing in your stead at the apex of the culture and what is that person’s MAP?

Next, how healthy is your culture? Indicators Abound.

• Do people feel comfortable sharing bad news or do they expect the messenger to be killed?
• How approachable are you—an open door policy that’s never used is a symptom, not a plus.
• Do the different departments work together or are they jockeying for position?
• In an ‘”us vs. them” world, do your people’s actions confirm their belief that ‘us’ are all their inside colleagues and your vendors and ‘them’ are the competition?

This may seem basic and time consuming, but in a world where it’s innovation and world-class customer service that’s can save your bacon in a downturn you need a strong handle on the basics—no matter how unpalatable they turn out to be.

Image credit: sota767