Hot bodies wanted immediately: talent shortage imminent, says futurist: are cautious workplace execs headed for disaster?

Workforce, Sept, 2003 by Andy Meisler

AS FAR AS ROGER HERMAN is concerned, a good Labor Day resolution would be to rev up your company's recruiting, hiring and training programs ASAP. Never mind that unemployment is still high, or that the U.S. economy is in a so-called "jobless recovery," or that the "offshoring" movement is picking up steam. Or that your CEO will think you've lost your marbles because he's been listening to mainstream pessimists like Jared Bernstein. "We're stuck in the worst hiring slump since the Depression," says Bernstein, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. "We're nothing near any kind of shortage of workers, skilled or otherwise."

Wrong, says Herman, a well-known speaker and management consultant. By early next year, he says, top talent will he in the driver's seat. "We're going very soon from a buyer's to a seller's market," says Herman, co-author of last year's Impending Crisis: Too Many Jobs, Too Few People. This quick switch "is going to make the late '90s look like practice." Ignore his warning, he adds, and you're at risk of having your top talent swiped or your business laid low by the coming economic expansion.

He bases his prediction on the same data that has most forecasters pointing the other way. Herman contends that the recent increase in worker productivity will in the short term reduce total jobs, but will also create feverish demand for the relatively few people equipped to operate new labor-saving technology. These people won't he found among the ranks of most presently employed skilled workers, he says. The majority will have to be laboriously retrained. Some of the workers most desperately needed will be found in the telescopic sights of savvy competitors who are already executing long-range strategic hiring plans. Others are talking to headhunters who are secretly building lists of pre-vetted candidates for their smarter clients to recruit on short notice. Herman contends that laggards in this zero-sum competition will find themselves with crucial human cogs missing when the economic boom he predicts for 2006 is in full swing.

Herman also warns that 2006 will be way too late to come to grips with the phenomenon of "warm chair attrition." He explains that studies by Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com "and a couple of the big accounting firms indicate that between 30 and 40 percent of employees have already checked out. They've shown up, but in their minds they're on to their next job, which they'll get as soon as tire economy gets better and there are opportunities out there." He pauses, peering forward into prosperity. "What happens when you've lost 40 percent of your workforce? What will you do then?"