Andrea Coombes of the WSJ (sub req’d) wrote a piece last week highlighting a recent survey that found, "workers who telecommute from home or elsewhere, while still a very small portion of the work force, report the highest levels of satisfaction with their jobs and loyalty to their employers." The article has some great insights and mini-cases. Longer snippet below.
posted by David
Fabulous article in the WSJ today about consumer spending. Why do some companies get it and others stand idly by? Propel, Starbucks, the Luna Bar, Zara, Starwood all had my vote years ago.
Check out the story here 
Posted by Rana
Doug Ready and Jay Conger on “How to Fill the Talent Gap” in the Wall Street Journal.
It’s no secret that global companies are finding it harder to fill critical jobs these days. They’re struggling to land top recruits in emerging markets, for instance, and haven’t prepared people in their own ranks to step seamlessly into management slots. Companies are racing to find solutions, but most of them are making a crucial error: They’re treating these problems as separate issues. At most multinationals, a host of problems in recruiting and developing talent are converging to create a perfect storm — a crisis that could derail the company’s growth strategies. To meet the challenge, companies must rethink how they hire, train and reward their employees, placing those tasks at the heart of their business plans. In doing so, they have an opportunity to address all these separate problems with a unified plan, rather than waste time and resources attacking each of the issues individually.
We arrived at this conclusion after researching more than 40 companies to gain a better understanding of their concerns in recruiting and developing. We wanted to identify what steps companies were taking to excel in these areas — to see what it would take for a company to become a world-class talent factory. As a part of our research, we identified five common problems in recruiting and development.
Read this incredible interview with British economist Philippe Legrain, author of Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them. Legrain points out the economic value of immigration and of diversity and of the absurdity of current U.S. policy.
I certainly agree that the US immigration system is absurdly restrictive in granting visas to highly skilled foreigners, and that US companies suffer, or shift operations overseas, as a result. If you think that Google, Yahoo!, eBay were all co-founded by immigrants, and that nearly half of America’s venture-capital-funded start-ups were founded by immigrants, keeping out foreign brainpower is a remarkably stupid policy.
But I disagree with the notion that the US only needs highly skilled immigrants, still less that they can be selected through a points system, as proposed in the immigration reform bill earlier this year. Bureaucrats cannot possibly second-guess the requirements of millions of US businesses, let alone how the fast-changing economy’s employment needs will evolve over time. In effect, the points system amounts to government officials picking winners–a notion that is rightly criticized in industrial policy and elsewhere. And it allows nothing for serendipity: that people end up contributing to society in unexpected ways. Who would have guessed, when they arrived in the US as children, that Jerry Yang would one day co-found Yahoo! and Sergey Brin Google?
In any case, the US does not just need highly skilled workers, it still relies on low-skilled ones too. In fact, they account for over a quarter of US jobs. Every hotel requires not just managers and marketing people, but also receptionists, chambermaids and waiters. Every hospital requires not just doctors and nurses, but also many more cleaners, cooks, laundry workers and security staff. Many low-skilled jobs cannot readily be mechanized or imported: the elderly cannot be cared for by a robot or from abroad. And as people get richer, they increasingly pay others to do arduous tasks, such as home improvements, that they once did themselves, freeing up time for more productive work or more enjoyable leisure. Thus as advanced economies create high-skilled jobs, they inevitably create low-skilled ones too.
The economic benefits to diversity are two-fold. First, a greater variety of products and experiences for consumers, such as ethnic restaurants, fusion food, R&B music, or new holistic therapies that blend Eastern and Western influences. Second, and perhaps most importantly, diversity stimulates innovation.
As John Stuart Mill rightly said: “It is hardly possible to overrate the value, for the improvement of human beings, of things which bring them into contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar… it is indispensable to be perpetually comparing [one's] own notions and customs with the experience and example of persons in different circumstances… there is no nation which does not need to borrow from others.”
It is astonishing how often the exceptional individuals who come up with brilliant new ideas happen to be immigrants. Twenty-one of Britain’s Nobel-prize winners arrived in the country as refugees; nearly half of America’s venture-capital-backed start-ups have immigrant founders. Perhaps this is because immigrants tend to see things differently rather than following the conventional wisdom, perhaps because as outsiders they are more determined to succeed.
Yet most innovation nowadays comes not from individuals, but from groups of talented people sparking off each other–and foreigners with different ideas, perspectives and experiences add something extra to the mix. If there are ten people sitting around a table trying to come up with a solution to a problem and they all think alike, then they are no better than one. But if they all think differently, then by bouncing ideas off each other they can solve problems better and faster. An ever-increasing share of our prosperity comes from companies that solve problems–be they developing new drugs, video games or pollution-reducing technologies, or providing management advice–and research shows that a diverse group of talented individuals can perform better than a like-minded group of geniuses.
The value of diversity comes into its own in societies at the forefront of rapid change. When countries are technologically backward, they can make huge leaps forward simply by copying what more advanced economies are doing. They may benefit from being culturally uniform, since this makes it easier for everyone to move forward in unison. Likewise, in periods when economic change is slow, more homogeneous companies and countries may find it easier to organize themselves efficiently than more diverse and fissiparous ones. But in advanced economies in periods of rapid economic change such as now, the value of diversity and the creativity it spurs comes into its own. That’s why, as China catches up, America needs to open up further to foreigners in order to stay ahead.
Diversity also acts as a magnet for talent. People are drawn to places such as New York, Silicon Valley or London because they are exciting, cosmopolitan places. It’s not just the huge range of ethnic restaurants and cultural experiences on offer, it’s the opportunity to lead a richer life by meeting people from different backgrounds: friends, colleagues and even a life partner.
According to a fascinating new special report in the Economist:
In time, the early 21st century may come to be seen as a golden era for a different sort of globalised city-state. Its protagonists are found in London’s Mayfair, lower Manhattan and Hong Kong’s central business district. … Technology, some predicted, would end this sort of clustering in city centres. Why would financiers want to live and work in pricey, jam-packed urban jungles? Armed with broadband, mobile phones and BlackBerries, they could work from almost anywhere. Yet as this summer’s market turmoil showed, a BlackBerry operated from a beach is not always enough. Besides, those urban jungles have their compensations. So rather than dying out, financial centres are proliferating.
Today’s financial centres—the cities where big financial transactions are done and a dizzying array of financial products are traded—include not only long-established places such as New York, London and Tokyo, but also a growing number of newer financial hubs in Asia, the Middle East and beyond. … Unlike the walled medieval city-states, today’s financial centres are increasingly dependent on their connections to one another. Technology, the mobility of capital and the spread of deregulation around the globe have created a vibrant and growing network. When one city is asleep, another is wide awake, so trading goes on round the clock. The number of transactions between financial centres has surged recently as investors have diversified across regions and asset types.
What do they have that others don’t? They score well on a package of key criteria that global financial firms are looking for: plenty of skilled people, ready access to capital, good infrastructure, attractive regulatory and tax environments and low levels of corruption. Location and the use of English, the language of global finance, are also important.
Finding and retaining good people has become an ever more important factor. Steven Kaplan and Joshua Rauh, a pair of economists at the University of Chicago, reckon that capital deployed per employee (the amount of money firms have invested divided by the number of staff) at the top 50 American securities firms surged from an average of $136,000 in 1994 to $1.79m in 2004.
For many skilled professionals who can pick and choose their place of work, quality of life matters a lot.
Brand Avenue reviews Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter’s, Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture.
Heath and Potter (listen to a radio interview here) spell out the relationship between the construction of “counterculture” and its broad and profound effects on consumer behavior. After all, what is the true value of “rebellion” and “avant-garde” ideas and actions? Could it be that these things, rather than fulfilling some nebulous concept of societal progress, are really just manifestations of capitalism’s cutting edge, defining new markets and identifying new needs?
Here’s a short excerpt from the book:
The concept of countercultural rebellion and its elusive twin—cool—have resulted in a status competition that has driven consumption to unprecedented heights. It’s not conformism that leads us to spend, spend, spend on the unnecessary and the ephemeral, but its opposite: the quest to distinguish ourselves from the masses through our enlightened, hip, or just plain rebellious consumer preferences. And marketers of products ranging from cars (the Volkswagen Bug) to computers (the Mac) to shoes (Doc Martens) have been reaping huge harvests from the countercultural seeds that were sown in the 1960s. The point was never underlined more heavily than when Kalle Lassen, editor of the ragingly anti-capitalist Adbusters magazine, came out with the Black Spot sneaker: a “subversive” running shoe that Lassen hoped would “uncool Nike” and “set a precedent that [would] revolutionize capitalism.” As Heath and Potter point out, there is nothing “subversive” about trying to beat Nike. “That’s called marketplace competition. It’s the whole point of capitalism….”
Kevin Stolarick of the Creative Class Group and Lisa Taber of
FortiusOne have paired up to develop a series of ‘heat maps’ that show
the hottest places in the country based on your lifestage and some
preselected criteria. The maps allow you to zoom in on specific parts
of the country or see how your current city compares to others.
Retired, Not Dead Map
Come back Monday to see next week’s map: Place to Retire
Randstad USA is forcing their twenty-something employees to work alongside the older generation. As a former corporate communications director and Gen Xer, I can tell you that no X or Y’s or Millenials like to be forced into unnatural partnerships. Just give us freedom and flexibility to do our jobs! Baby boomers need to step off their philosophical corporate management style.
See the full story from BusinessWeek, here.
Posted by Rana
Today, I went to get my haircut in Toronto. I got a recommendation for a nice salon from the guy who renovated our house. It was first appointment so I tried to make small talk with the stylish young fellow wielding with the sheers. He asked me me where I’m from.
“DC,” I said.
“How ’bout you.”
“I moved from Detroit. I worked at GM and lived in Birmingham.”
“Hmmmmm… Small world… My wife’s from Birmingham. It’s a nice place. What brought you to Toronto. Did your plant shut down?”
“Oh no,” he replied. “I’m an engineer.”
“So, why’d you leave?”
“It was sooooooooo BOOOORRRRRRRRRING, I couldn’t stand it. This is soooooo much better – so much more energy. I can be me.”
“So what is left of Marxism? It is still about expanding democracy, which is
still so fragile in much of the world. The utopian aspect of thinking beyond the
present – for all of the dangers associated with attempting to impose utopias -
at least arms us with a way to think critically about what needs to be changed.
… Without vision though, politics circles endlessly around its present conceptions. In the absence at the moment of a material force to assist us in a progressive direction, change happens, perhaps not in determined, predictable ways as he might have thought. But it happens,
and humans still make their own history even if not under circumstances chosen
by themselves.”
The original post is from the University of Michigan’s Ronald Suny (pointer via Mark Thoma).
For Marx, the working class or proletariat was the “material force” for change brought together firstly by its common labor and second by its tough working conditions. The creative class in reality is a far more universalizing force. Every single human being is creative – what everyone of us truly shares is not our physical labor but our innate creativity. The failure is not one of “material conditions” but of a left – and of so-called “progressive” politics that is bereft of vision and cannot see the reality right before their very eyes.
What would Marx say about that?
