Lessons from Ebenezer Scrooge on Workforce Planning
by Lois Melbourne
Ebenezer Scrooge, the principal character in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, was visited by spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come on Christmas Eve to give him a new perspective on priorities and show him the weakness of his wicked ways.
In the same vein, what have you learned from staring into the terror of what you thought was going to be a mass exodus of retirees and enormous turnover of younger workers as they hip-hopped through their career positions? Has your company learned from it’s weaknesses? Can you point out where this economy (even if it is a bit of a nightmare, like Ebenezer’s) is a chance to learn, retool our lives, and be better people and employers in the future?
Let’s review what we should have learned from some of the fears for our workforce planning:
Fear
Great knowledge is going to flood out of the company as boomers leave en-mass.
Lesson
They are still aging, and may not retire from the workforce as soon as they planned, but they may retire from YOU.
Fear
Younger generations are changing jobs faster than the company is accustomed to.
Lesson
They may be slowing their job hopping right now in answer to the economy, but what happens if you don’t challenge them and treat them right as the market picks back up?
Fear
The war for talent is making it impossible for us to find qualified workers.
Lesson
Don’t, for a second, think that the rising unemployment rate has solved this problem. There are some great opportunities to find people right now – but we’re still not educating enough people within our organizations for the right positions for our future.
Are you spending your “Scrooge’s night” doing workforce analytics to evaluate what hasn’t worked in the past or what has worked? Are you doing workforce modeling of your future to see what will happen with the changes in workforce scenarios compared to the changing business plans? Are you doing succession planning throughout your organization so that your younger workers feel theyhave a place in the future of the company – and so that you can develop those people through the mentors and experts who will retire in the near future?
Are you shouting out from the highest levels of the organization that you appreciate your team. You value them, you want them to be a part of the organization and you want them to help you drive their careers to the betterment of themselves and the organization?
Take a lesson from Scrooge. It’s not too late to learn from the fears we must all face. If we push the snooze button too many times through this awful dream we’ll still have these problems, and new ones, as the economy picks up and we lose our most valuable players.
Another resource to read about the topic of workforce planning and scenario failure:
Human Resource Executive article
Cheers,
Lois
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