Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Boom expected in hiring security-cleared workers


In 2007 will see a surge in the hiring of workers with security clearances as a result of the many multimillion-dollar Department of Defense contracts that were awarded in December 2006.

Security Cleared Workforce Data:

  • 18 Months - The average time to thoroughly vet a prospective worker with no security clearance. (Office of Personnel Management reports that clearances can be reduced to six months or less)
  • More than three-fourths of government contractors agreed that the need for cleared employees to work on federal contracts had increased, in the past five years:
    • “greatly” (51 percent)
    • “somewhat” (26 percent)

  • 50% of the respondents of a 2006 Federal Computer Week survey believed the security clearance process, run by the Defense Security Service and OPM, had:
    • worsened (31 percent)
    • not improved at all (24 percent) in the past year.

  • There are some 79,500 contract employees working on federal information technology projects.
  • Of the top 10 locations seeking cleared candidates, seven are in the national capital area.
1. Chantilly, Va.
2. Washington D.C., metropolitan area
3. McLean-Arlington, Va.
4. El Segundo, Calif.
5. Fairfax-Reston, Va.

In terms of salary:

  • Cleared workers sent to Iraq can earn on average $98,400
  • Cleared workers earned on average $78,400 in Maryland
  • Cleared workers earned on average $76,500 in Virginia
  • Arizona ranked tenth in the nation at an average earning of $64,400.
  • Candidates with higher clearances can earn on average $10,000 more a year than workers with only a secret or confidential clearance.

Boom expected in hiring security-cleared workers. [Clearancejobs.com, Federal Computer Week]

Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing

Friday, January 19, 2007

The Rise of Crowdsourcing



The Wired magazine article "The Rise of Crowdsourcing" reads, "Remember outsourcing? Sending jobs to India and China is so 2003. The new pool of cheap labor: everyday people using their spare cycles to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R & D."


The internet, low cost equipment and access to information, and professional and hobbyists who have extra 'cycles' to burn have become low cost resources for corporations big and small. Here are some crowdsourcing examples (from Wired magazine):

Lego
The beloved toy company encourages its fanatical customers to design everything from robot operating systems to Lego sets.

SportingNews.com
Last summer, the sports media company made blogs and social networking the foundation of its Web relaunch. Traffic and ad revenue soared.

Second Life
Residents of this popular online world put in more than 22,500 hours of “work” each day, stocking the virtual world with everything from ninja armor to giant tree houses.

Threadless.com
This hipster company prints T-shirts with designs submitted to its Web site. It expects to earn $20 million in revenue this year.

What are the rules of Crowdsourcing? Here are 5:

1. The crowd is dispersed
People spread around the world can perform a range of tasks – from the most rote to the highly specialized – but this would-be workforce needs to be able to complete the job remotely.

2. The crowd has a short attention span
These new workers find time after dinner and on weekends. So jobs need to be broken into “micro-chunks.” Most tasks on Amazon Mechanical Turk, for example, take less than 30 minutes to complete.

3. The crowd is full of specialists
For Procter & Gamble, the crowd is the world’s scientific community; for VH1 it’s any ham with a camcorder; for iConclude it’s the handful of professionals with experience troubleshooting Microsoft’s server software.

4. The crowd produces mostly crap
Networks like InnoCentive, Mechanical Turk, and iStockphoto don’t increase the amount of talent – they make it possible to find and leverage that talent. Any open call for submissions – whether for scientific solutions, new product designs, or funny home videos – will elicit mostly junk. Smart companies install cheap, effective filters to separate the wheat from the chaff.

5. The crowd finds the best stuff
Even as a networked community produces tons of crap, it ferrets out the best material and corrects errors. Wikipedia enthusiasts quickly fix inaccuracies in the online encyclopedia. Viewers of Web site YouTube find the one tastelessly funny amateur video from the 10 that are merely tasteless.


The Rise of Crowdsourcing. [Wired Magazine - Jeff Howe]

5 Rules of the New Labor Pool. [Wired Magazine - Jeff Howe]

Look Who's Crowdsourcing. [Wired Magazine - Jeff Howe]


Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing

Monday, January 15, 2007

U.S. Contingent Workforce Statistics



Jobs


Staffing companies match millions of people to millions of jobs.




  • 2.9 million people per day are employed by staffing companies.
  • 12 million temporary and contract employees are hired by U.S. staffing firms over the course of a year.
  • 79% of staffing employees work full time, virtually the same as the rest of the work force.

Flexibility

The staffing industry offers flexibility to both employees and companies. People can choose when, where, and how they want to work. Companies can get the skills they need to keep fully staffed during busy times.

  • 66% of staffing employees say flexible work time is important to them.
  • 64% of staffing employees report that their work gives them the scheduling flexibility and the time for family that they desire.
  • 90% of client businesses say staffing companies give them flexibility to keep fully staffed during busy times.

Bridge

Temporary and contract work provides a bridge to permanent employment. People can try out a prospective employer and showcase their skills for a permanent job.

  • 88% of staffing employees say that temporary or contract work made them more employable.
  • 77% of staffing employees say it’s a good way to obtain a permanent job.
  • 80% of staffing clients say staffing firms offer a good way to find people who can become permanent employees.

Choice

Many people choose temporary and contract work as an employment option. They can select their work schedules and choose among a variety of diverse and challenging assignments.

  • 67% of staffing employees say choice of assignments was an important factor in their job decision.
  • 23% of staffing employees have little or no interest in a permanent job—they prefer the alternative arrangement over traditional employment.
  • 33% of staffing employees say they work for a staffing company because they like the diversity and challenge of different jobs.

Training

The staffing industry provides free training for millions of temporary and contract employees to help meet today's demand for skilled workers.

  • 90% of staffing companies provide free training to their temporary employees.
  • 65% of staffing employees say they developed new or improved work skills through their assignments.
  • 40% of staffing employees say they choose temporary or contract work as a way to obtain employment experience or job training.

Staffing Statistics - Staffing Facts. [American Staffing Association]



Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Who Rises to Power in American Business?

"Who achieves success and power in the United States? In the twentieth century, the easiest path to power was available to certain individuals—mainly men, mainly white—who were otherwise favored with the right religious, family, geographic, and educational ties. But a significant number of "outsiders" created their own road to success, overcoming significant odds."

Here is a summary of a recent Q&A with Anthony Mayo of Harvard Business School and author of Paths to Power: How Insiders and Outsiders Shaped American Business Leadership:

Q: Your research suggests that for the first three quarters of the past century access to positions of power and leadership in America was not available to all equally. Who was favored during that time?

A: What is often overlooked or forgotten in the Alger stories is that the individuals who "came up from their bootstraps" did so with the assistance of an important and influential benefactor...the benefactor helped to channel that energy into an opportunity with potential. In a sense, this personal network or connection helped to facilitate access to others in positions of influence which in turn provided opportunities for advancement.

In Paths to Power, we trace seven factors that either provided easy access to an insider track to power or functioned as obstacles to success. These include birthplace, nationality, religion, education, social class, gender, and race. Those from privileged families have always had an easier path to traditional power. Those on the outside—foreigners, women, African-Americans, non-Protestant religious affiliations—often pursued other paths to power. When doors were closed, outsiders created their own paths.

Q: How has that situation changed today? Do paths to power mirror trends and values in society at large?

A: There has been a gradual opening of access. In our research, we saw education supplanting religion, birthplace, and nationality as a more important factor for success by the late 1950s. The MBA as a prerequisite for success in the top tiers of business became increasingly important from the 1970s through the end of the century, and as a result, we have seen a massive proliferation of MBA programs. At the elite graduate institutions, there may be less access—in essence, a closing of the funnel.

Q: In what areas do paths to power still appear to be closed today? Who is being excluded?

A: The three areas that are still part of the outsider path are social class, gender, and race. The most intractable issue is probably social class. The composition of leaders who overcame poverty to achieve the pinnacle of success in business changed very little over the course of the twentieth century.

Q: What does your research suggest about American business leadership in the future?

A: Businesses that will succeed in the twenty-first century will be those that embrace the diversity of their workforce, that can compete in a global, competitive landscape. Education is far more important today. Going forward, a global perspective will be increasingly vital.

Q: What do you think is the single most important finding from the research that went into the book?

A: At first glance, the composition of CEOs in America seems to have changed little in 100 years—it's mostly comprised of white men. But digging deeper, it is apparent that the composition has changed in some dramatic ways. There are more foreign-born CEOs today, religion is no longer a barrier to entrance, education has helped to level the playing field for some from less advantaged backgrounds, etc.

Link to Who Rises to Power in American Business? [HBS Working Knowledge - Anthony Mayo]



Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Companies, Compliance, and the Contingent Workforce Statistics

What are companies thinking about their contingent labor? Yves Lermusiaux provides the following statistics:

• 92 percent cite inconsistent costs and a lack of price control a primary “pain point” with their current contingent labor workforce.

• 69 percent are highly concerned about their organ ization’s compliance with industry regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, SEC, FDIC, etc.

• 66 percent are highly concerned about employee misclassification and co-employment risk.

• 50 percent do not know if their company has ever defended itself against a lawsuit associated with contingent labor.

• 33 percent could not report which, if any, department holds primary responsibility for minimizing their company’s risk and liability as it relates to contingent workforce management.

• 21 percent could not estimate their company’s current annual spending for contingent labor in the U.S.

• 18 percent could not estimate the number of suppliers currently providing contingent labor to their company.

Contingent Workforce Management Trends. [Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Journal - Yves Lermusiaux]


Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Tracking the Rise of Global Contingent Workforce


Steve Marlin of Global Services writes, "CONTINGENT workers, also known as temps, part-time and contract workers, have long been a staple of the global labor force, providing a flexible and cost-effective means of smoothing out fluctuations in demand and production...Small wonder that companies are clamoring for ways to reduce the costs and improve the efficiency of their contingent workers."

"Beset by a lack of uniform hiring processes and procedures, minimal controls and high administrative costs, companies have found themselves in a quandary in managing contingent workers. And now that the contingent workforce has gone global, the level of complexity has ratcheted up, with a patchwork of labor laws, wage rates and cultural differences thrown into the mix."

In response to this companies are:

* Investing in processes and technology to meet demands for greater visibility into * Setting up master contracts with staffing-services companies to handle requisitions for every kind of worker, from unskilled to the most technically
* Implementing supply chain software to put in place the same controls over contingent-worker procurement as they have for indirect goods and services.
* Being challenged to bring consistent process, technology and program governance to a function that’s historically been decentralized.

Companies are taking these initiatives because they are looking to:

1.) Reduce the time for candidate-sourcing and filling requisitions was cited as a challenge by nearly half (48%) of participants in an Aug. ‘06 study by Aberdeen Group.
2.) Improve collaboration (48%)
3.) Obtain greater visibility into rates and processing costs (40%)
4.) Increase compliance and verify worker qualifications (36%)
5.) Reduce runaway spending (33%).


Tracking the Rise of Global Contingent Workforce. [Global Services - Steven Marlin]

Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing