by Jennifer Hart Yim | Nov 8, 2016 | Blog, Logistics, Supply Chain, Talent
An upcoming webinar series will help your business improve its ability to attract, hire and retain top supply chain talent.
This guest post comes from SCM Talent Group, a national supply chain recruiting and executive search firm.
The supply chain discipline has been experiencing a talent shortage that many experts in the field are predicting will only get worse, before it gets better. Baby boomers are retiring rapidly, while the number of qualified candidates coming up through the ranks aren’t enough to close the gap. While macro-level solutions have been implemented, such as the expansion of university supply chain programs, it will most likely take years before any significant progress is made.
A new webinar series, presented by SCM Talent Group, is centered around the talent aspects of the supply chain discipline. The purpose of this series is to provide low-cost, high-impact solutions and advice that employers, hiring managers, and HR partners can implement in efforts to improve their abilities in attracting, hiring, and retaining top supply chain talent.
The first webinar, “Strategies for Sourcing & Recruiting Top Supply Chain Talent,” will take place on November 10th from 2 p.m. – 3 p.m. EST. Participants will learn how to optimize their supply chain recruiting program and processes around industry best practices and discover creative sources and strategies for attracting and hiring candidates for their supply chain job openings.
Future webinars will take place regularly, and cover various aspects of supply chain talent acquisition and talent development, such as:
- Create an Employee Referral Program that Drives Results
- How to Craft Job Descriptions that Attract Top Supply Chain Talent
- Top Employer Branding and Candidate Attraction Strategies
- How to Develop a Winning Supply Chain Leadership Development Program
Rodney Apple, founder and president of SCM Talent Group who also serves as the career coach for APICS, will lead these solution-oriented webinars, which will occasionally feature guest speakers.
Through his almost two-decade career in both corporate and executive search environments, Apple has experienced an assortment of supply chain talent acquisition and talent development programs. He will provide informative best practices with the goal of helping employers overcome hiring challenges created by the supply chain talent gap.
To register for this upcoming webinar, sign up here. To stay informed on SCM Talent Group’s upcoming webinars, sign up to receive regular updates.
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by Fronetics | Oct 25, 2016 | Blog, Strategy, Talent
A reduced workweek may mean better performance, talent retention, and bigger payoff for employers.
In August 2016, the Washington Post reported that Amazon plans to pilot a program in which select teams will work just 30 hours a week. The teams’ employees will be salaried and receive full benefits, as well as 75% of the pay full-time employees earn. The entire team, including managers, will work on this reduced schedule.
“We want to create a work environment that is tailored to a reduced schedule and still fosters success and career growth,” states an event posting by the company. “This initiative was created with Amazon’s diverse workforce in mind and the realization that the traditional full-time schedule may not be a ‘one size fits all’ model.”
The program comes just a year after a New York Times report depicted Amazon encouraging marathon workweeks while discouraging vacation — and even unfairly evaluating employees in the wake of personal crises like cancer or miscarriages.
Will the new part-time program help combat that image? Will the 30-hour workweek model impact Amazon’s productivity? While Amazon does not plan to roll the program beyond the select teams, research suggests that the company might reap some positive benefits from employees’ working less.
A reduced workweek benefits employees and the employer
Let’s look at how working fewer hours might result in healthier, more productive employees.
1. Shorter hours improve the physical and emotional health of the worker.
A National Bureau of Economic Research study examined manufacturing companies that experienced an unexpected spike in exports, meaning longer working hours, and the resulting toll on employees. The findings revealed that long hours on the job increase an employee’s risk for heart attack, depression, and injury. But despite more health concerns, employees took fewer sick days. The impact on productivity when a company has more sick, injured workers is self-evident.
On the contrary, a shorter workweek correlates with better physical, mental, and emotional well-being. That translates to more alert, adjusted, happy employees who have more stamina to complete their jobs. In fact…
2. A reduced workweek does not decrease productivity — rather, it often increases it.
There’s a reason 43% of companies offer shorter workweeks to some employees: It has a positive impact on their bottom lines. Just how much? Tax services firm Ryan saw revenue and profits almost double and client satisfaction reach an all-time high. KPMG goes as far as to say it uses flexible work hours as a “strategic business tool” that “allows us to accomplish our business goals and become more successful.”
Well employees leading balanced lives are able to accomplish more in a shorter amount of time, and that pays off for their companies.
3. Shorter hours may increase employee engagement and decrease turnover.
All the extra hours workers are putting in actually drive disengagement. Left wholly left unchecked, the culmination of issues arising from an unbalanced work-home life can increase absenteeism and turnover. Simply put, employees logging long hours are significantly more prone to burnout.
And turnover can be costly for employers. The U.S. Department of Labor currently estimates the average cost of a bad hiring decision to be as much as 30% of an individual’s first-year potential earnings. Think about how that adds up as employees put more time with the company and earn higher salaries.
Going back to Ryan, the tax services firm, implementing a shorter workweek reduced the company’s turnover rate from 30% to 11%. That’s huge.
So, Amazon is definitely onto something with its 30-hour workweek experiment. The question is, what will happen when it succeeds? Will more businesses try reducing working hours? Could something like this work for your business?
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by Jennifer Hart Yim | Oct 24, 2016 | Blog, Strategy, Supply Chain, Talent
Millennials have a reputation for being lazy and feeling entitled — but what if we got it all wrong?
This guest post comes to us from Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in Supply Chain Management and Procurement.
For the past few years, there’s been a glut of articles about the millennial generation in the workforce. These articles originally focused on how millennials’ perceived laziness and entitlement kept them from securing long-term employment. Coincidentally (or maybe not) these articles first started popping up around 2009-2010, when the great recession made for the toughest jobs climate in decades, especially for young people trying to find their first good jobs out of university — a difficult task for most grads even in a boom economy. Over time (as the economy improved and millennials’ ranks in the workforce began to swell), these millennial-focused articles shifted to discussions of what makes millennials “difficult” to work with. There are a few negative stereotypes that tended to come out of this analysis:
- Millennials ask for raises and promotions constantly.
- Millennials hop around from job to job with little loyalty to their employers.
- Millennials always want to take more vacation time than their superiors.
Of course these stereotypes (like most stereotypes) don’t actually hold up to scrutiny. And in the past couple years it seems as if the business press has finally caught on to the fact that millennials are fitting in and thriving in working culture. Now, companies recognize that this generation offers unique advantages to employers. Millennial-focused analysis has shifted to talking about millennials’ good qualities, including being creative, highly proficient with technology, and excellent multi-taskers.
What millennials aren’t doing
What it comes down to is that companies are now fighting over millennial talent. They’re trying to do all they can to get the star performers to the table. On this topic, we read an interesting piece in the Toronto Star recently — just the latest in the long history of millennial thinkpieces — that bats down one of the nastiest stereotypes about millennial workers. It discusses how new research shows that millennials actually take less vacation than other employees, and tries to tease out the implications of how a seemingly-more “casual” working environment can lead to a chained-to-your-desk working culture.
Interesting stuff.
The article, titled “Millennials Can’t Afford to Keep Skipping Vacation,” discusses the phenomenon of millennial “work martyrs” — people who are afraid to take time off, even if that time off is paid vacation mandated by employment contracts. It cites research from the non-profit U.S. Travel Association that millennials take much, much less time off than stereotypes would dictate. (We should mention that, over the past 15 years, the use of paid vacation days has fallen off a cliff among a lot of different age groups). At Argentus, we try to stay abreast of whatever’s happening in the world of work, so it’s interesting to us think through issues like this.
So what are the implications of this trend?
The article echoes a lot of anxieties about 21st-century white-collar working culture more generally: that in our hyper-connected world, employees are expected to be always working, even when they’re not in the office. Companies reward people based on time commitment rather than productivity. Vacation time might be generously apportioned, or even unlimited, but workers don’t necessarily feel like they can take vacation. The Star article cites an interesting case: in 2015, Kickstarter began offering unlimited paid vacation, but the result was that actual time off taken went down. It appears that workers, especially millennials who are often working more junior, more precarious jobs, won’t take time off unless you tell them to.
Whether this plays out in every company, anxieties about these changes in the workplace are real: They illustrate the importance of work/life balance, which, despite being a buzzword, is also a real concept that pays dividends for employers. Employees who take vacations are not only happier, they’re more productive.
The solution? Maybe companies should start enforcing paid time off instead of rewarding workers who adopt a “work martyr” mentality.
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by Fronetics | Oct 11, 2016 | Blog, Strategy, Talent
Networking can do more than help you find your next job opportunity; it can make you smarter, happier, and more financially stable.
Kathryn Minshew, founder and CEO of The Muse and The Daily Muse, began a piece for the Harvard Business Blog Network with this sage advice: “Network Your Face Off.” The truth and value of this statement cannot be underestimated.
Here are seven reasons why networking is essential and why connections matter.
1) The larger the network the larger the salary.
A recent study of 6,000 executives in over 3,000 firms found that the more connections an employee has, the greater the salary. Specifically, the study found that a 50% increase in network size accompanies a 3.8% increase in salary with respect to the average.
2) Networks beget jobs.
A survey conducted by The Adler Group found that 46% of active candidates and 49% of passive candidates found employment thanks to networking. Similarly, a study conducted by Banque de France and the University of Toulouse noted that half of all jobs in the United States are filled through personal contacts. ABC News cites an even higher number — according to ABC News, 80% of jobs are landed through networking.
3) Wider networks can lead to better paid jobs.
Research conducted by Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis economist David Wiczer found that employees who found jobs through individuals within their network got paid, on average, 6% more than employees who found their jobs through direct contact with a firm.
4) Networks provide security.
People who are well-connected are more likely to stay in their jobs longer and have shorter periods of unemployment than people who are not well connected.
5) Networks bring opportunities.
The opportunities networks can bring include: partnerships, invitations to events, introductions, and invitations to give talks and presentations. In short networks bring opportunities that benefit and feed your career, professional development, and personal interests.
6) Networks make you smarter.
Knowing what is happening in your field and industry is vital. When you have a strong network you are more likely to be “in the know” than those who do not have a strong and active network.
7) Networks make you happy.
Minshew writes: “Networks are powerful, and when done right leave you surrounded by a core of individuals who are all rooting for your success and happy to help you.” So true.
Networking is essential. Get out there and build your network.
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by Jennifer Hart Yim | Sep 27, 2016 | Blog, Strategy, Supply Chain, Talent
The supply chain talent deficit is real — but what about the experienced people who can’t find a job?
This guest post comes to us from Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in Supply Chain Management and Procurement.
It’s no secret that we write a lot about the Supply Chain talent deficit — the growing industry consensus about a looming shortage of talent needed to fill Supply Chain, Procurement, and Logistics jobs as those roles grow in prominence and the baby boomers retire. It’s an important issue to the field that we recruit in, and we’re interested to see how companies, educational institutions and other industry players respond as it plays out. But today we wanted to comment on an interesting side note of the whole issue:
Every time we write about the Supply Chain talent deficit, on the Argentus blog or elsewhere, we see comments from experienced professionals in the field who aren’t able to find work. We’re always sure to say that the Supply Chain talent deficit is a big-picture trend, and doesn’t mean that everyone in the field is going to be able to get a job easily. But it’s interesting that we hear from quite a few people who are having difficulty finding work, despite the fact that companies are having more difficulty hiring in the field than perhaps ever before.
A comment by 3PL executive Valerie Kucherenko on one of our recent LinkedIn Publisher posts pointed out this disconnect, and got us thinking. First of all, here’s the relevant part of the comment:
“Frankly speaking there are so many articles, including the ones by Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting, indicating a shortage of qualified candidates in the Supply Chain field that I am torn between this feeling of high demand for Supply Chain professionals and the fact that many experienced ones can not find a job. Where is the confusion coming from?”
Let’s try to answer this question.
If there is a Supply Chain talent deficit, why are so many people in the field having trouble finding work?
First of all, the talent deficit in Supply Chain isn’t just buzz. Experts throughout the industry are talking about it, but it’s also something we’re hearing about daily from our clients looking to hire in the field, and from executives we speak to. We’re on the front lines of the talent war in this industry, and we can observe it directly. So it’s not that the difficulty of hiring in Supply Chain is made up.
Of course, the trouble that certain experienced people are having looking for work isn’t made up either. So we started thinking about big-picture reasons for this disconnect, based on our experience as people who have been recruiting in Supply Chain for over a decade. Here they are:
A certain amount of churn in employment is inevitable, and even a productive fact of the economy. There’s a reason why under economists’ definitions of “full employment,” there’s still about 5% of the workforce that’s unemployed. Structural factors such as geographic shifts and technological change mean that there will always be a certain number of unemployed people, independent of other factors like economic downturns, etc. This means that no matter the demand for Supply Chain talent, there will always be a certain number of people in between jobs — people who haven’t yet found work because it takes some time to get the right opportunity in front of the right people.
But that doesn’t tell the whole story. The other thing that helps explain this disconnect is the fact that the deficit of talent isn’t, strictly speaking, a numbers game. What matters isn’t necessarily the raw number of experienced candidates vs. positions (e.g. 10,000 candidates and 50,000 positions) so much as the kind of experience companies are looking for. This is one of the things that comes up over and over again in our conversations with executives.
Supply Chain’s role in companies is expanding. Instead of just being about putting product in the right place at the right time, Supply Chain now uses data, innovation, and supplier relationships to provide companies with a strategic edge. It interfaces with sales to plan and predict demand, etc. And while the function’s scope is increasing, companies are becoming more specific in their experience requirements. For example, more companies are looking for specific category experience (like Real Estate or IT) in Procurement. It’s possible that certain experienced professionals don’t have the right experience in the most high-demand niches (such as Demand Planning, S&OP), making it harder for them to find work than if “Supply Chain” was a more monolithic category. The nature of the experience required is changing — for example companies requiring specific software experience — and much of the deficit of talent exists on this cutting edge of skills requirements, rather than for more general, classic Supply Chain roles.
The solution to this issue? We think it’s two-fold: companies need to be more open-minded in their hiring, recognizing that strong business acumen can be as important to Supply Chain success as niche experience. And on the other side, candidates need to constantly work to adapt and diversify their skillsets, expanding their knowledge to follow the niches that are in highest demand among companies.
Hopefully that sheds some light on why it can be tough for certain Supply Chain professionals to find work even though there’s a deficit of Supply Chain talent more broadly. As F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
Which is true (in our experience), but we get that it doesn’t make it any easier for those Supply Chain workers who are having trouble finding that next role! Feel free to reach out to us for help.
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by Fronetics | Sep 26, 2016 | Blog, Strategy, Talent
What do people find when they google your name? Branding yourself can help sway their first impression.
Face it: Potential employers, customers, and other associates have likely searched your name on the internet before they meet you in person. What do they see?
Your LinkedIn and Facebook pages, Twitter and Instagram accounts, personal blog, and even your pins on Pinterest are all subject to public scrutiny. The sum of those findings is your brand image, what you put forth to the world to define who you are and what you are about.
The reality is that when you walk into a job interview, client meeting, or other engagement, you are likely being evaluated against the first impression the person made prior to your arrival through an internet search. Shouldn’t you think carefully about your brand and how you want people to perceive you?
To be successful, you need to take steps to build and enhance your brand. Here are four steps to branding yourself.
1) Define your brand
A brand is a story. What is your story? Take the time to sit down and look at where you have been and where you are. Where you want to be? What is your skill set? What experiences do you have? How are you unique? Take all of this information and knowledge and define your brand — tell your story. Be clear, be concise, and be direct. If you can’t define your brand in a sentence or two, you have lost an opportunity.
2. Take stock
What information is “out there?” Start by making a list of all the social media accounts you have, even if you no longer actively use them. Next, Google yourself. What do you find? As G.I. Joe says, “Knowing is half the battle.”
3. Define a strategy
At this point you have a brand and you know what information about your brand is publicly available. Is the information enhancing or hurting your brand? What steps can you take to strengthen your brand? For example, should you adjust your privacy settings on some of your accounts so that personal information and exploits are not available for all to see? Does your LinkedIn page need to be updated? If you don’t take the time to define your strategy, you will not be able to execute it effectively.
4. Take action
Frank Cavallaro wrote, “Strategy is about making choices. Execution is about getting down and dirty so that those choices can produce results.” Don’t stop at creating the strategy — execute. And remember, the internet is not static. What information about you gets added over time? Furthermore, it is important to periodically look at your brand. Is it still representative of where are and where you want to be? If not, take the time to re-brand yourself.
When you take the time to brand yourself, you have the opportunity to define that first impression.
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