"For about five years now, particularly after dinners that featured wine, human-resources executives have been telling me, "We've come to realize we don't really want most employees for the whole of their careers. We want their particular set of skills when we need them — but then things change so fast, we don't need that particular skill set any more." And many of these are companies famous for being good at H.R. "<p>Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but the solution would seem to be not hiring people based solely on short-term requirements. In other words, hire people that are good no matter what the requirements are.<p>But then again, this <i>is</i> HR departments we're talking about.
"We've come to realize we don't really want most employees for the whole of their careers. We want their particular set of skills when we need them — but then things change so fast, we don't need that particular skill set any more."<p>But job-hoppers are still evil, right?
>My clients were amazed by how much productivity they could squeeze out of their people in the downturn.<p>Overworking only works for a few months, after which people's health will start to suffer. All these managers are deluding themselves if they think this is going to keep on indefinitely. OTOH, if some people were underworked and they are just starting to pull their weight, that's another matter.
We you can't fight them join them. I guess the best option is to own a company instead of working for one. I'm pretty much preaching to the choir here but it's worth mentioning
Very similar to the arguments of the Luddites: The power loom is putting workers out of a job!<p>Some attempt to do something which gets the unemployed back to work could be good, but trying to create make-work by using more people than a job requires is not.
We have a situation of 'haves' and 'have nots'. A corporation of 100 employees has every reason to prefer that those employees work at 120% (50 hrs/wk).<p>Our society would benefit if instead the corporation hired 20 additional employees, and everyone worked at 100%.
Is 0% unemployment a good end in and of itself? Sometimes industries go through changes that reduce the number of people required to get the work done. It seems like if you're too aggressive about driving unemployment to 0, you end up with all your companies looking like GM.<p>That isn't to say that unemployment is desirable, and at current levels, it's almost certainly destructive. But the measures required to take unemployment from, say, 2-3% to 0 may cause more harm than good.
Doesn't seem to be working for me, but the mobile version does: <a href="http://m.hbr.org/12763/show/c66232388036dd9da4780e91b5bbdb0c&t=54114d0202b0d5685a50248ba19888bb" rel="nofollow">http://m.hbr.org/12763/show/c66232388036dd9da4780e91b5bbdb0c...</a>
Since 1975, the upper class has done a great job of making sure the proceeds of economic growth and progress go mainly to them. Increased productivity is good only when the benefits are shared.