EkaLore releases analysis from time to time on critical management issues in the markets. Today’s release looks at the current round of layoffs in a historical context.
At any given time, some skill sets are rarer than others. This leads the domestic and other global enterprises to compete to lock up these rare and valuable skill sets. This leads to a tactic of hiring as many of those scarce talents as possible. This often leads to an oversupply of talent.
This tactic and oversupply situation has historical precedent. In the late 90s, the specter of Y2K increased the demand for legacy mainframe coders and implementers. More recently, the transition to more modern websites drove the demand for coders who remembered the HTML toolsets for more than a decade.
Tech outside the “tech world” has driven spikes in demand as well. Finding talent to migrate manufacturing and finance applications drove demand for people who understood ERP and ETL implementation tools. Changing over point-of-care facing medical records implementation specialists are still in shortage. This history recommended a strategy of filling out large teams of staff talent during the Covid-19 and expansive digital growth of remote work, mobile shopping, and explosive Internet-media growth.
These hiring issues are not limited to the tech world. For energy infrastructure, there is a global shortage of certified welders for nuclear power plants. Growth in productive fossil fuel fields is constrained by experienced workers willing to expand wells during a period of the boom from a bust while labor markets are tight. Accelerated construction for LNG, pipeline, tank farms, and specific refinery expansions are constrained by available engineering and heavy construction talent – and their costs. In industry sectors and marketspaces where supplies or demands see disruptive events or processes, the demands for talent shift far more rapidly than trends in availability.
The tactical assumptions leading to predictions of hiring classes of tens of thousands drove creating, recruiting, onboarding, talent management, and first-line supervisor training. The media reports show the same reductions and adjustments in workforces from aerospace, tech, retail, and commercial real estate. Highlighted in the announcements from some enterprises are reductions in the specific talent acquisition, onboarding, and talent management staff levels. Reductions in force are also affecting entire levels of management and supervision as spans of control are increased, and expectations and demands are made of supervising/managing skills. The reductions in force in Challenging Times are the results of fixing the tactical assumptions.
Consider our last posting about what Layoffs cost - https://www.ekalore.com/post/bote-how-much-do-these-layoffs-cost
Look for more articles on this topic from EkaLore at www.ekalore.com/blog-1
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