How to lose the lottery, and other workforce management lessons

Posted by: Matt Rivera

Our one-year anniversary! It feels official now, kind of like we were just dating in the beginning, but now we’re going steady. So, on this auspicious occasion, here are some of the things that stand out to me about our musings here on The Seamless Workforce over the past year.

Planning to plan. You’re either trying to keep them from heading out the door, or you’re trying to figure out how to bring the best workers through the door. This is an age-old struggle for all employers, but because of current and projected economic conditions, it’s become harder than ever. Likely, you’ll need robust hiring in one area, while you might have to decide who to keep in another.

And based on whether or not you believe the baby boomers will ever retire, or more kids will graduate college with engineering degrees, you are faced with the prospect of not finding the right employees. Making your workforce strategy a priority and getting top management involved is not the wave of the future anymore — it’s the here and now of running a business. If you’re not already executing your plan, it’s almost too late (almost).

Winning the Wrong Lottery. I had an old boss who used to espouse the virtues of safety on the job. One of his favorite lines was, “Every time we put someone out on a job in an unsafe environment, it’s like buying a ticket to the lottery; sooner or later if  you put enough tickets in, your number will get pulled.” While this is still true (and costs businesses millions each year), the risk of using independent contractors is more prevalent today, and undoubtedly more easily avoided and potentially more costly.

In case you missed some of our posts, the government has begun a new lottery called the “Big Misclassification Pick 6,000.” They have pumped about $25 million into finding companies who have misclassified independent contractors and will pick on about 6,000 companies out there to audit.

Think about it this way. Remember when there was only one big lottery you could play? Now there’s about 10 different versions from different states with different rules, posts, etc. You could hope the government’s version doesn’t catch on as well, but a better strategy would be to get a handle on these workers now. Good luck (not winning, I mean).

It’s 11 o’clock, do you know WHO your staffing vendors are? I think we can all agree that things have changed a lot in the past couple of years. What’s harder to gauge is exactly what has changed, and how things have changed. I’m speaking of course about your staffing supply chain. Your big vendors have bought other companies, large and small, and are trying to integrate them into their business, service, and financial models.

Smaller vendors have cut staff or aren’t around anymore. We’ve even seen many simply change their names in hopes of being reborn. Whatever the case, it’s clear that your vendors are not the same companies they were two years ago. And we’re not out of the woods yet. They are going to continue to change.

If you don’t have a structured way to monitor, assess, and plan for these changes, you lose some of the flexibility that comes with temporary staffing. Managers lose patience, vendor lists grow, and your days are spent dealing with orders, contracts, time cards, and invoices. Not what you thought you’d be doing when you went into human resources. Outsourcing was once a buzzword. Now it’s a necessity to preserve your sanity.

That special part of the male brain. I held off for a while, but then the movie references slowly crept into my posts. It was inevitable. However, I’m close to getting a $10 million federal grant to continue my research into how a specific part of the male brain is devoted to move quotes and references.

Unfortunately, my early research concludes that this part of the brain is co-occupied by the “listening to spouse, household chores, anniversary dates” part of the brain. And it appears that with continued stimulus, the movie part slowly takes over and spreads. So while more research is necessary, I can only plead innocence, as I am simply a victim of evolution. By the way, I’m looking for more research subjects.

As we embark on yet another year of sarcasm, learning, and discovery, I’ll end with my most obscure movie reference yet. “Would you like to buy a monkey?”