Human Resources Q & A
By Tim Rutledge
The question:
The most recent federal budget contained a provision aimed at making it easier for older workers to remain in the workforce. Does this have anything to do with the so-called “shorthanded” economy?
Tim's Response:
It most certainly does. The government’s initiative is designed to make it possible for someone to remain in an employment relationship while still contributing to a pension plan. The government’s own task force on workforce demographics was, I think, a factor. Labour Minister Solberg is on record as saying that all the employees in the federal public service who are becoming eligible to retire in the next few years simply can’t be allowed to. There aren’t enough people coming up to replace them.
We are beginning to realize that we’re in a situation not unlike that of the frog in the boiling water. If organizations don’t start doing something about what I’ve been calling the seller’s job market (more job vacancies than job seekers), they will suddenly find themselves unable to carry out business plans because they can’t find enough people, or the right people, to deliver them.
The Economist, the respected British news magazine, ran a cover story in its October 7-13, 2006 issue called “The Search for Talent: and Why It’s Getting Harder To Find”. It followed this story up in The World in 2007 with this assertion:
“In 2007, not even the most hard-of-hearing bosses will be able to ignore the war for talent. The war will rise to the top of the corporate agenda everywhere.”
The Globe & Mail in August reported as follows:
“For business, success in the shorthanded economy will mean finding and keeping employees and will be the single most important management task.”
Still with the Globe & Mail:
“Jim McNevin, former dean of Dalhousie University’s Faculty of Management, spent much of his 30-year career in economic development pondering how to find jobs for people. Now in his semi-retirement, he has struggled to come to grips with economics turned on its head: finding people for jobs. ‘The way we’ve thought about our economy for the last generation-and-a-half is no longer relevant’, he says. (August 21, 2006)
And:
“Experts say making the labour crunch work for Canada will mean a radical overhaul in basic assumptions.”
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Tim Rutledge, Ph.D., is a veteran human resources consultant and publisher of Mattanie Press. You can contact
him at tim_rutledge@sympatico.ca or visit www.gettingengaged.ca.
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