I've commented on this before, but my employer has rolled out a hybrid model. It doesn't have a stated number of days to be in the office, though one day a week was floated verbally by the VP over HR. I already know some managers will expect five days in the office with WFM by exception. People with kids will get more leeway to be home. Other managers will have zero expectations to be in the office. Individual employees will be subjected to the same policy but different supervisors. The other thing is coming in the office a minimum will be a tacit acceptance that your career here is at an end. That's even mostly true if your supervisor doesn't care. Others will; enough will that a promotion or larger raise will get squashed. Expectations will be to be in the office three days a week minimum. I have low expectations for the policy. I think it's going to create frustration. Management will feign disbelief that anyone could be frustrated, pointing out the words in the policy allow WFM while putting their hands over their ears and chanting "LALALALA" when anyone says "yes but the implementation isn't so generous."
I think we're looking at a business catastrophe of seismic proportions. The popular narrative is "look at all the jobs out there going unfilled" but the realistic take is "look at how little businesses expect to pay for labor". Dan Price pointed out that if you're a Millennial, you've experienced two "once in a lifetime" recessions since you graduated college at which point your social contract is fuckin' broken. The WSJ is worried this morning about everyone buying into real estate as a hedge against inflation because if you can't raise rent you eat shit. And you can't raise rent if jobs are going unfilled because the wages offered aren't enough to bother working for. This thread is a horrorshow (a horrorshow backed up by this morning's Daily Shot - I mean, look at this bullshit), but one thing I wanna draw attention to: I mean, I made that call two months ago. "Your $78 an hour job is not worth my time." And speaking as someone who has been researching buying all his employees health insurance? The public market sucks? But the subsidies are such that I gotta stretch to beat your shitty marketplace option. I'ma do it because if I don't I'm an asshole but there are a lot of companies out there whose management tattooed "ASSHOLE" on their own foreheads. And, okay, I can automate my way out of some stuff. But in human cases, the automation sucks. This is me not buying my health insurance through Square because every online review points out that beyond the initial setup it's a catastrophic dumpster fire. Having bought our 401(k) through Square I 100% believe that. So what we're left with is rich fucks buying up all the houses as an inflation hedge and poor fucks going "fuck you I'd rather eat cat food than let you treat me like that." I think capital has no generational memory of what the world looks like when labor has any power. And I think GenZ is about to remind them.
Early during the pandemic I saw a comment from someone suggesting asking "what did you do for your employees during the pandemic?" as a question everyone should ask during an interview. Asking about WFM seems to have become another.
- Bought laptops or paid a stipend towards continuing ed equivalent to a laptop for people who liked their laptops - Instituted family and medical leave - Started a 401(k) - Staggered work schedules to minimize contact between employees - Switched to maximum televisits to permit work from home opportunities - Increased reimbursement for more than half the classes of care we provide - Increased logistical staffing 150% We already have flexible hours because of the nature of the care we provide. It's funny - a number of online advocates recommend you look into SHOP plans because you get phatty tax credits for the first two years, but your full-time-equivalent for all employees needs to be like under $56k a year. I've got employees whose FTE hourly is like $415k, and I'm not even married to them.
I guess I don't get what that last graph is telling me? What's the y-axis? What are "available skills"? I've tried googling but all I'm getting is the index and not the definitions.
It's from here.Each index equals the percentage of responding firms reporting increase minus the percentage reporting decrease. Data are seasonally adjusted. Results are based on responses from 71 firms.
Oh yeah I saw that - so it's saying that 44% of firms reported a decrease in availability of skills needed in May 2021? But also a 17% increase in...average workweek...?
In real world terms, the Richmond branch of the Federal Reserve asks 71 firms - I can't easily find who, but they're all in "the District of Columbia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and most of West Virginia" - something very much like - hey so in the past month, have you been able to hire employees with the skills you need And of those 71 firms surveyed, they take the firms answering "yes" and make that into a percentage, the firms answering "no" and make that into a percentage, then subtract "no" from "yes." So in this case, if 20 of those firms said "yes", that would be 28%. The 51 who said "no" would be 72%. Subtracting 72% from 28% would give you -44%. It's an abstraction? But it's an abstraction they've been chasing since 1993. What I think is awesome is of those 51 who said "no", like 10 of them said "but I totally see this resolving itself on its own in six months." Because they are teh stupid.