Want workers who have begun to take control of their careers? Want people who put renewed emphasis on balancing work and personal life? This new workforce has created a new kind of company – the Emergent Employer. The Spherion Corporation, a staffing and recruiting company, conducted research into emergent employers that’ll help you.

The Rise of the Emergent Employer

Nearly a decade ago, Spherion began tracking historical changes in the attitudes of America’s workers, from taking control of their careers or free agency, to their renewed emphasis on work/life balance. This new group of U.S. workers — dubbed emergent workers — has developed very different motivations, attitudes, and beliefs about their ideal work environment. The number of emergent workers has continued to grow since they were first identified in 1997 and is expected to represent the majority of U.S. workers by 2007. What motivates these workers is far from the traditional employment pact of the past where employees expected to remain at one company and receive their gold watch at retirement.

The U.S. workforce has undoubtedly changed and changed dramatically. Throughout this evolution, there will be significant implications if the workforce continues to change but employers do not.

How to Become An Emergent Employer

Emergent employers can be broadly defined by their utilization of two key workforce strategies:

• They have adopted emergent management practices to effectively compete for employed talent.
• They have become masterful at maintaining flexibility in their cost and workforce structures by leveraging a contingent workforce.

These progressive employers have implemented emergent practices such as flextime, job sharing, and telecommuting because they acknowledge that time and flexibility are key drivers of retention among the majority of today’s workers. Practices encouraging career and financial growth, such as training and development, are more prevalent and highly encouraged at emergent organizations. Workers are rewarded based on performance and measurements, not simply tenure. Emergent employers are keenly aware of what motivates and satisfies their workforce because they regularly survey employees to determine retention drivers specific to their workforce.

Emergent companies strategically and proactively develop an integrated hiring strategy in order to effectively utilize "supplied" vs. "employed" talent. These organizations reap benefits such as increased flexibility, cost-savings, and the ability to better weather economic fluctuations because they’ve hired the right mix of full-time, contingent, or contract labor. In addition, emergent employers enjoy greater financial success and employee growth than their traditional counterparts.

Emergent Employers: Creating A Model Workplace

Nineteen percent of today’s companies can be classified as emergent. But who are these emergent employers? The majority (62%) of emergent companies are larger organizations, typically $1 billion or more in revenue. However, a number of companies both small and mid-size fall into the emergent camp, and all the emergent organizations cut across industry and geography. Most importantly, they all have one thing in common — emergent employers are preoccupied with creating an environment that ensures retention of their existing workforce and attracts valuable, quality talent that is the best fit for their organization.

Overall, emergent employers are far more likely to utilize key retention programs at their organization, such as offering more work/life balance options, training and development programs, surveying employees on retention drivers, and offering bonuses to top performers.

Adapted from Joliet Junior College Training Source, 2006

Business Responses to an Aging Workforce: Are you ready?

Never before has the workforce experienced the kind of changes that will be driven by aging issues. Many organizations are seeing unprecedented numbers of older adults departing the workforce as they reach “normal” retirement age, and these organizations will be facing new challenges and asking a whole new set of questions:

• What are the implications for succession planning as large numbers of employees reach retirement age?
• How do we capture institutional knowledge?
• How can we encourage the generations to work together?
• What are the special issues of mentoring, coaching, and reigniting the performance of long-term employees?
• What new work options will need to be offered to encourage mature workers to remain in the workplace?
• What can organizations do to eliminate ageist language and comments from the workplace?
• How can organizational culture be modified to encourage the increased employment of engaged and experienced workers?

Join management consultant and business author Cathy Fyock, CSP, SPHR, as she leads a dialogue using an interactive case study on the implications for HR professionals and business leaders in the new challenges of an aging workforce.

How Dare You Presume I’d Rather Be Young? Exploring attitudes on aging to overcome ageism and age discrimination

What is ageism and age discrimination, and how can it be eliminated from the workplace? It starts with exploring our personal attitudes regarding our own aging. With any luck at all, we’ll all experience what it’s like to be an older worker, the one dimension of diversity that’s bound to impact all of us. This topic is critical to HR professionals as the workforce ages.

This session, led by management expert and business author Cathy Fyock, CSP, SPHR, will create new paradigms for viewing aging by examining your current perceptions, analyzing your role models, confronting your fears, and celebrating success stories that can be applied to the workplace.

Cathy’s new presentation, “How Dare You Presume I’d Rather Be Young” explores ideas for assessing your attitudes toward aging and challenges you to consider ways to celebrate your own aging as a way to eliminate ageism and age discrimination in the workplace. This list of ten ways is excerpted from a list of 101 ways to celebrate aging. If you’d like the entire list or more information on her presentation, email Cathy at cathy@cathyfyock.com.

1. Take a class; learn something new. (I’m learning Spanish and thinking about getting my Ph.D.)
2. Hold an “Alive and Well” party and celebrate of your life.
3. Pass along a craft or skill.
4. Write your autobiography.
5. Write your eulogy.
6. Don’t place artificial limits on what you can do.
7. Consider your favorite and least favorite older person and why you rate them this way.
8. Consider the question, “How old is old?”
9. Celebrate a milestone or accomplishment.
10. Join AARP and admit it to your friends.

August 2 SHRM IL State Conference, “Work Force Issues for Workers 50+, sponsored by AARP IL

August 22 ASTD, “Business Responses to an Aging Workforce: Are You Ready?” Louisville, KY

August 24 – 25 LSHRM, “HR Essentials,” Louisville, KY

August 31 HR Book Club, Nickel and Dimed, Louisville, KY

August 31 Deadline for book project: The Truth About Hiring the Best (on the shelves in early 2007, published by Pearson Education. Look for more information to follow!)

Future Dates for the SHRM HR Generalist Certificate Program ‘06

Oct 9 – 11 New York City

October 30 – Nov 1 Chicago

Nov 13 – 15 Washington, DC

Nov 29 – Dec 1 Orlando

Are you looking for a high-content speaker for your next conference or meeting? Call or email Cathy to find out how she can work with you to meet your specific goals and objectives.

Cathy Fyock, CSP, SPHR, is an employment strategist—helping organizations develop strategies to recruit and retain top talent in an aging and changing marketplace. For over 15 years she has combined her knowledge of work-force issues and her talents as a speaker to provide innovative and inspirational learning events. She has helped organizations attract top talent, reduce turnover, and improve productivity in a volatile labor market.

Praise for Cathy’s programs

"Cathy Fyock developed a three-day selection course for us at Bridgestone/Firestone, and has been instrumental in delivering the pilot course and subsequent train-the-trainer courses for our zone management. Cathy has impressed us by combining our own ideas about what was needed in the training, and her own experience in this field. As a result, she has created an exciting course that specifically addresses our needs and is helping us to select better candidates, which we believe will ultimately result in more productive and loyal employees. We highly recommend Cathy as an instructional designer, as an employment strategist, and as an effective trainer."

--Mark Frankel, BFS Retail & Commercial Operations, LLC

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