New breed workers need new yardsticks

Business Horizons, Nov-Dec, 1990 by Barbara Whitaker Shimko

Bob Muhlenburg, a corporate recruiter for a top fast food chain, spends several days a month in Pittsburgh and other rust-belt cities hiring management trainees who will be relocated to Philadelphia and other high-employment East Coast cities at company expense. Many of these "relos" (as they are affectionately called) will not stay with Bob's company. He continues to recruit them because he, like most others involved in finding employees for service business outlets, is in desperate need of people to fill entry-level management ranks.

The service sector is particularly vulnerable to the lack of balance created by hiring growth and labor pool shrinkage. This is true because, first, there are projections that 86 percent of new jobs created between 1985 and 1995 will be in the service sector. Second, businesses with outlets directly serving customers are labor intensive on the business site. Whereas manufacturing can take advantage of overseas labor (which is cheap and obedient, for now), and banking and insurance can rely much more heavily on automation to handle many functions previously requiring direct labor, overseas labor and automation are not options for service outlets.

THE APPLICANT POOL

Although many people are available for work (some actively looking and some passively hoping), there is apparently a shortage of workers who fit the image that recruiters such as Bob have in mind. It is understandable that recruiters want to hire persons from identifiable mainstream groups who in the past have proven to be successful, easy-to-manage employees. The applicants that recruiters are attracting these days do not belong to those desired groups but rather to non-mainstream groups. These include, among others: minorities, females, older people, handicapped, disadvantaged, and those lacking work experience. In addition, some applicants will have the added burden of a major personal problem such as a discordant home life (if they have a home), a prison record, or a history of alcohol or drug abuse. In all likelihood, if you hire someone and then decide to fire him or her because things are not working out the way you had hoped they would, the person you bring in as a replacement is going to seem very much like the one you just let go. When this gets to be a habit, revolving-door turnover is in the making.

If recruiters are looking to match their old idea of appropriate candidates to hire (and they are) with an applicant pool that doesn't fit the image, obviously something's got to give. Currently in service sector outlets such as convenience stores, retail chains, and fast food restaurants, it is showing up as a turnover problem of crisis proportions. An important aspect of solving this problem is being clear about those who make up the applicant pool, because realistically that is the potential work force available to be hired. After acknowledging the nature of the work force, the next step is developing ways to make employees successful once you have hired them. Given the available applicants and the need for employees, it may well be that there is no alternative.

This article suggests that service sector recruiters and managers be given some information and have their awareness raised concerning the available labor pool. It provides some specific ideas about the substance of the information and awareness, and concludes that with appropriate coaching, the available labor pool can prove to be a very viable work force for service businesses.

MIDDLE CLASS, MAINSTREAM, AND PREPARED

Middle class individuals have systematic preparation for just about everything they do in life. For instance, there is pre-kindergarten day in spring when tots spend a little time in the classroom that will be theirs come fall. During grade school there are tutors and coaches for everything from math to Little League. High school brings preparation for the SATs needed for college admittance. Beyond school, employers provide a variety of training programs, and many provide funds for outside college courses toward an MBA. If one has adequate status, training will even be provided to help one land a new job if he or she is fired.

As positive as these benefits are, they are not available to people outside the societal mainstream. Project Transition, a program created in Philadelphia to bring together welfare recipients and the fast food industry, provides insight into the outcome of making available the advantages of systematic preparation to non-mainstream persons. Project Transition came into being when a consultant working on the turnover problem in a top fast food chain put her attention on welfare recipients as a natural source of employees for the labor-starved fast food industry, the fastest growing segment of the service sector. She realized that the combination of the labor shortage and the growth spurt in service-business hiring resulted in an uneven equation. Project Transition was created to screen, train, and place welfare recipients into full-time jobs in cooperating restaurants. Once hired, the former welfare recipients are provided with on-the-job coaching for at least eight weeks.