The labor market isn’t the only thing tight these days – check out the muscles in Joe Employee’s back after weeks of doing not only his own job but also the work of someone who quit. And the economy isn’t the only thing booming – there go those headaches, again, as Jane Employee covers one more time for an incompetent co-worker her bosses won’t fire because they can’t find anybody else.
Nationally, a recent survey by a top management consulting firm found that while almost three-quarters of small and mid-size business owners say it’s tough to find new employees, 82 percent of these same companies are using existing staffs to handle their increased workload.
Seifert Systems Invests in Energy Efficiency to Strengthen Operations
For manufacturers, energy is more than just another operating expense. It plays a critical role…
Learn More
Donald J. Fletcher, president of George S. May International, the firm that did the study, said managers should take comfort in these statistics as evidence that today’s tight labor market, usually cited as a problem, “may well be a blessing in disguise for many companies.”
That is, of course, unless you’re the one stuck with all the extra work.
Although low unemployment stiffens the pressure to increase wages and benefits, those left behind – those who don’t change jobs with the ease with which some change nail color – typically don’t view having to work harder and longer as a benefit, especially if they’re salaried and don’t get paid anything extra.
Kristen L. Cyr, editor of the North*East Independent, a small weekly newspaper covering North Kingstown and East Greenwich, is no stranger to picking up slack from vacated positions.
When an editorial assistant and sports editor left earlier this year it took more than three months to find qualified people who were willing to accept entry level pay to replace them, Cyr said.
Meanwhile, she did most of their work and reporters also pitched in by answering phones and serving customers. “It was a little hectic. It is harder on the other people,” Cyr said. “I turned in a lot of 80 to 90 hour weeks. It made me very tired, weary and wishful.”
Weary of combing through resumes with skills limited to “I always wanted to be a writer,” and others who were “clearly overqualified,” Cyr nevertheless refused to merely hire quick replacements “because it would be too important later on.”
And as a salaried employee she received no extra compensation for her troubles, but last week Cyr cheerfully explained that she’s just happy her newspaper is once again fully staffed. “My bonus will probably be at that big newspaper in the sky,” she said, laughing. “But that’s how this business is. There’s a lot of turnover.”
Doing more with less
Not everyone, of course, is taking understaffing and extra workloads so well.
In last week’s Providence Business News Executive Poll, 75 percent of those surveyed said they were having trouble finding qualified new employees and that positions were going unfilled.
To deal with this labor shortage, 23 percent were extending hours for existing staff, 32 percent were using temporary employees, 32 percent were increasing use of technology and 13 percent were actually turning away business, which to national management consultant Fletcher is just plain unacceptable.
“Too often the automatic response to more work is to hire more workers,” he said, when such “added costs should only be taken when the company has proven that existing workers cannot cost effectively handle the increased work.”
Hiring isn’t the problem, making sure existing employees are being fully utilized and effectively managed is, Fletcher said, and companies should make sure they are truly “pushing the limit of what employees can effectively handle” before adding or replacing staff. “More than four out of five businesses can take on higher workloads with their current staffs.”
But who would really be paying for that?
Michael Benevides, clinical therapist at the Providence Center, hears stories all the time of Rhode Island workers emotionally buried beneath “accelerated rates of downsizing” these last few years – an economic trend that may be lost in all the talk about tight labor markets.
“You have to look at each company individually,” he said. “A company can say they’re short, but how hard are they trying” to really fill open positions, and how much are they willing to pay?
When positions go unfilled “all the other workers who remain are under a lot more stress. You get people working harder and longer,” Benevides said. “A lot of people come in simply overworked,” with stress symptoms like depression and alcohol abuse as well as “a lot more physical problems.”
“These are not the dot.com people” who can reportedly cruise up Route 495 any day of the week and find a more lucrative job, Benevides continued. “These are people living and working in Rhode Island who simply don’t see another job option.”
Probably nowhere is this better illustrated than in the huge labor problems at hospitals here and across the county – with mandatory overtime one of the critical issues along with wages and health insurance.
While Teamsters and nurses have so far been stalled – barely – from striking at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, administrators today have no more or better answers on managing this shortage of health care workers in a productivity-driven society.
While Edward J. Quinlan, president of the Hospital Association of Rhode Island, called mandatory overtime a “last option, not a first,” he said there are currently nursing vacancies, “budgeted positions,” available at hospitals throughout Rhode Island, many of which that have been unable to open new and needed beds because of lack of staff.
Quinlan also said union contracts at some hospitals in Rhode Island have restrictions against hiring from temporary agencies or per diem pools “until you have exhausted the existing workforce” – literally it seems – and that mandatory overtime is not unique to hospitals but is affecting everyone from airline mechanics to train station switchers, which are also positions “where a rested employee” is critical.
“There’s lots of demands placed on workers in this country,” Benevides said, and while some companies are acknowledging this – giving executive options of taking 20 minute naps during the day, putting in gyms, etc. – not much is being done to help workers in non-specialized jobs, who are also experiencing the same kind of complaints.
While he tries to help his clients realize their options, if they wish to work just 40 hours a week and their employers demand more, it’s easy to feel trapped. “They feel like an emotional hostage to the job,” Benevides said, adding that for most workers finding another job – likely with a cut in pay – is “not that easy. It’s not that simple,” despite a tight labor market. “They don’t see options.”
