Jim Thomason's "The Business of People"

This morning the Tennessean announced that the jobless rate in Nashville had dropped from 9.3% a year ago to 8.1% last month. That sounds good... actually that is good. But what exactly does that mean? The Chamber of Commerce lists the adult workforce in Nashville at 787,389. Allowing for those commuting in from outside Nashville and undocumented/uncounted workers, let's just say that the total adult workforce in 850,000. Remember too that at any one time about 4% of the workforce is in transition; just moved here for their spouse's job, just had a baby and out of the workforce for awhile, just graduated and looking for that first job, etc... Historically Nashville's unemployment rate, even in boom times, is 4.5%. So the real unemployment rate, that percentage of people who want a job and can't get one, is the difference between 8.1% and 4.5%, or about 30,000 people. That's still a large number but in a community of over a million people, its 3% of the pop...

This morning WSMV in Nashville, usually my favorite local station, reached a new low in weather reporting. With a light snow falling amidst rising temperatures and substantially clear roads, the warnings and imagery would have you thinking Donner Party. Our parking lot is almost empty, and much of that due to Metro Schools lack of courage in closing yet again when it didn't have to. Other absenteeism can be traced to folks looking at their televisions and not out their windows. There were two accidents, count them, in Metro Nashville that required emergency workers. The footage of one of those accidents played continuously throughout the morning weather coverage. Some young cub reporter was dispatched to Clarksville showing footage of a slushy street with cars moving at nearly full speed. His comment? That it was surprising how fast traffic was moving given the dangerous conditions. He also pointed to Wilma Rudolph Blvd. where "last week over 200 wrecks were reported." ...

Unless you get to be CEO, at some point in your career you'll work for somebody younger. When that happens it stings for a lot of reasons. It is an unpleasant right of passage like the loss of an older friend or grandparent. It tells you where you are in your career unless you do something drastic to shake things up. What it tells you about your career status may hold true even if you do shake things up. Organizations, as much as they may try to adopt egalitarian language, are pyramids. There are fewer positions the higher up you go. Along the way you reach a point past which you won't rise higher. You know that in your intellectual mind just like your know your own mortality. You just don't want it brought front of mind like when one supervisor moves on or retires and the next one is younger than you. This can happen for several reasons. You can be a professional in a skill that supports, but is not at the core of, your employer. I'm an HR professional in...

Our daughter works in HR for a local state-supported non-profit. They absolutely, positively prohibit employee use of social media at work. Don't do it, don't think about it, don't even think about thinking about it. This means she violates organizational policy whenever she updates their Facebook page or posts job openings on Craigslist. You can't make this stuff up... Now before you think I'm picking on one organization I would submit that there are a lot of old school traditionalists that are still of the mindset that social media use at work can be banned. The State of Tennessee where two of my relatives work has blocked eBay at the firewall. Many others have blocked Facebook. What all of these types of organizations fail to recognize is that a game changer has arrived. Mobile Social Media. Here's why this changes everything. According to Research in Motion approximately 50 million people use mobile social media applications, most notably Twit...

Please don't mistake this for a rant because it absolutely isn't. I have a bias for coming to work and I always, always do unless I'm so sick that I can't get out of bed. I have missed work because of road conditions a total of two days in the nearly 30 years that I've been working for companies. This doesn't mean as much as it used to; technology has changed the nature of work to the point that much of it can be done from anywhere. Missing a day here or there while working from home, especially if schools are closed and you are watching kids is sometimes the better part of valor. But what if your work won't allow that? What if you have to work in order to get paid and pay your bills? I find that a lot of younger workers don't understand what that takes. Here are some things I've learned and where my "I always go to work" comes from. I grew up in a rural community of 1,200 where almost every man did one of two things; worked on t...

On Friday I had commented to a couple of executives that one of the goals in any employee communication is to incite the best thoughts and instincts in people. It is a fundamental HR competency that you craft any message to avoid inadvertently starting conversations that you don't intend to happen on subjects that divide people. Some examples that come to mind are one Plant Manager who tried to explain, poorly, to a group of factory workers that they were receiving market pay for their isolated area in Kentucky but said, "You're getting paid what you're worth." The anger over someone from outside that small town telling people that they weren't worth much never subsided until that Manager was replaced. Another EVP was trying to brag on an assembly line group whose product went into a very expensive Toyota SUV. In the mid 1990's that vehicle sold for $40,000 and this group made about $6.50/hr. He said, "I bought one and recommend that you do too....

If you're older than 30 or ever attended a 401(k) educational seminar you've heard it. How we're not ready for retirement. How we haven't saved enough and how you need some astronomical amount of money you can't possibly save in order to afford retirement. While few people are saving enough, period, there are problems with the doomsday scenario. It is based upon an unrealistic retirement age established in 1935, manual labor, and the idea of employer pensions, now mostly a thing of the past. With no pension and a traditional retirement age, how do you possibly retire? Traditional retirement savings ideas are based upon the "three-legged stool" notion; your retirement is financed by your own personal savings, your private retirement benefits (pension or 401(k)), and Social Security. The doomsday Sayers project that without a pension your 401(k) and Social Security are all you'll have, and you'll be short. Well, if you perform manual labor and ...

Most employee handbooks define what the organization considers its intolerable violations; those things that, if you do, you're fired. Most offenses fall far short of that, thankfully, and are corrected by coaching or discipline; the offending party goes back to work while everything is kept confidential. Somewhere between those scenarios is that most difficult situation where everyone knows or thinks they know everything and the offense poisons team cohesion. The choices left at that point are to terminate the offender for a non-terminable offense, which isn't fair, or transfer them somewhere else in the organization. This can prove to be far trickier than it looks, but it can be done and is often worth the trouble. A great example of how this is being done well is Jeff Fisher's acquisition and management of Randy Moss. You don't have to be sports fan to get this example. To take the football talk out of the example you just need to know this: Moss is a fa...

In a corporate environment the truth is often a victim of power and the fear of it. That's as unnecessary as it is unfortunate. When people feel that they can't tell the truth to their boss, staff or peers it usually comes out of unfounded fear such as: 1. Afraid to make the boss mad 2. Afraid to look bad in front of others 3. Afraid to offend someone and deal with the tension or conflict. Now here's the problem; organizations in the information economy live or die based upon good decisions. Good decisions depend upon having good information, which can't exist when people aren't candid with one another. Coming from secular business almost ten years ago I was surprised that one of the biggest issues in Christian organizations is hearing the truth. Between the fear factor and the desire to be nice, the truth often suffers. In my role I have to sometimes say unpopular things to people in power. For me there's no escaping that obligation and it just comes...

I'm approaching 30 years working in private sector workplaces and I have learned a few things: loyalty is rewarded if you work for good people, getting behind can be cured by staying later, and a workplace romance is never a good idea. The reason is that the presence of position power and romantic attachment are toxic . This combination is toxic to relationships and to the workplace in several ways. 1. You can't hide a romance...don't even try . Once an individual with position power is perceived to show favor to someone on staff then favoritism is introduced, real or perceived, into the workplace. 2. Judgement gets clouded . The person with postion power may rationalize that they're being fair to everyone, but that's not always the case. Its worse when they lie to themselves that nobody knows. 3. The staff starts seeing ghosts . Even when no favoritism or romantic activity is going on, the perception that it is becomes the easy-out, blame-all for e...

I grew up in a small town. Actually, that's not true; I grew up about 10 miles outside a really small town in a community of about 500 people called Little Muddy, Kentucky. Next closest place was Morgantown, population 1,200, where my parents had their business. My wife and I raised our family is the next biggest place, Russellville, about 20 miles away with a population of 8,000. I am small town by birth and professional by choice. That's an important choice. We're a medium-sized company of 500 people. There's another way to look at that; we're a really small town of 500 people. When you spend more time at work than at home you build community with the people at work. Departments are like streets; some neighborhoods are furnished better than others. Everybody is into everybody else's business. Now I don't mean that in a bad way. You can't build community, connectedness and teamwork on the one hand and anonymity on the other. People can...

This shouldn't be a long epistle of a blog post. The princples are simple and straightforward and go something like this: 1. We should be dressed professionally every day at work. 2. You can wear casual clothing items and still look professional. 3. You can wear professional clothing items poorly and still look sloppy. 4. Overly revealing clothes never look professional unless you're a dancer. 5. You never know which minister, author, or customer you're going to run into. Nobody tied you up, threw you in the trunk, and made you work here. You came to the Bible Company and asked for a job. When you get dressed in the morning make sure to remember where you work. Central Parking's customers probably don't care how CP's people dress: ours do. HCA's content providers, their doctors, probably don't care if their receptionists are half dressed. Our content providers, our authors, more than likely do. Remember where you work. It really is that simpl...

You can't turn on the television and avoid hearing opinions about how our economy came to its current state. And while it is true that speculation in real estate was rampant, fueled by poor lending practices and irresponsible buyers, there's a deeper root cause; we don't make much in the way of physical products anymore, and we don't really want to. Two days ago in the New York Times David Brooks called this out wonderfully. In his Op Ed piece, "The Genteel Nation" Brooks points out that our change in thinking has given us "Great Britain disease" leading to the decline of our empire like that of our mother country centuries ago. His thesis is dead-on; like Great Britain before us, we built our economy making things. We applied scientific knowledge of primary industries, and society's best and brightest engaged in those endeavors. Now 65% of graduates from the nation's top schools go into law, finance or consulting. This isn't the fir...

We are 34 days away from move-in day at our new Live Events headquarters in Plano, TX. Just saying that, much less writing it, makes me catch my breath because there is a lot yet to be done. It is in Scott Holloway's capable hands, however, so I have every confidence that it will be (like all his projects) on-time and on-budget. We meet on this project weekly and I came across some information today that might help answer an age-old question within the company: "Why does office furniture cost so much more than I can buy it at retail?" This is a question that comes up every project: why, for instance, does a good cubicle-grade desk chair cost $500 when you can buy them at Office Depot for $300 or less. Okay, here's why... You don't sit in your home office chair 8 hours a day for years at a time. We have some $300 chairs in our company, and our experience with them is that they must be replaced about every three years. That's $100/year for usage. The...

Three weeks ago we hired an outstanding young woman to be my part-time Admin. Her name is Nubia and she has done a wonderful job very quickly. She will also leave my area in two weeks to take a full-time job at Grupo Nelson. Early on we identified this young lady as a unique talent; bi-lingual with a degree in International Business and an intense curiosity about our business. An outstanding positive attitude didn't hurt either. I gave her an early version of our strategic planning materials to shred and she did, after reading them and coming back to ask really good questions. When the Grupo job was posted a couple of weeks ago it became clear: she was a great hire for us, but fit the Grupo job perfectly. It was a tough decision, but we waived the six month waiting period for new-hires to post and offered her the position last Friday. In the end, the company is best served by having the right people in the right places and my job is easier to fill. We're parting on great ...

One of the bedrock values that we live by in our HR department is the sanctity of confidential information. Whatever we know, we don't talk about. Anytime someone asks me if something is in confidence I always say the same thing, "If I hear in our conversation a violation of the law or significant violation of company policy I have to put on my "Agent of the Company" hat; otherwise what you say here, stays here." That applies not only to information we know about employees, but also candidates and former employees. We adhere to this value because trust and confidence are the currency with which we do our business in the company. We never forget that and this is mostly a good thing. I say mostly because there are times when it really bites us. Not everyone who leaves us tells the truth about why they left. Not everyone who fails to get hired tells the truth about why they didn't. Sometimes an employee with an unfavorable outcome needs a face for their ...

Occasionally older team members leave your workforce involuntarily. That's a sensitive issue when it happens. Other older members of the team become unsettled because they probably worked with that person for years, and some wonder if they're next. There are legal issues involved as well. Age discrimination laws give disgruntled ex-staffers a tool with which to strike at your company even if no discrimination is involved. We've had some older people leave our workforce in the past few years. At the same time we also recently celebrated a milestone birthday with one of our most revered and respected colleagues. At 80, Jack Countryman is producing some of the finest work of his long and legendary career. In his late 60's, Larry Downs Sr. is doing great work in selling Spanish products. So if we're welcoming of some and not afraid to dismiss others, where's the line between when someone has excellent experience and when they become a candidate for termin...

In the spirit of the Seth Godin, Tom Peters piece on YouTube, I'm going to keep this post to the point. When you think of job skills you usually think of things you can do, like design a book cover or balance a spreadsheet. Those are important and will get you in the door. The keys to longevity, however, are the behavioral skills of coping with an ever-changing post-recessionary business landscape. 1. Adaptability to change - Change once came like an occasional tidal wave every few years and reset the landscape. Now it's like standing on the beach watching wave after wave after wave wash over your feet with no end to the waves on the horizon. You don't stand on the beach and bitch about the waves; don't stand in the office and complain about change. Its the business life you chose. 2. Resiliency in the face of change - Many bright, young talents start strong and burn out or become cynical when they see repeated changes. They blame management for poor planni...

About six months after moving to Nashville we traded my trusty commuter Honda for a barely-used Avalon for my wife. We got a great deal; an African American female soldier who had been in Iraq over a year decided to sell the car rather than make payments for it to sit in the parking lot at Ft. Campbell. One of the things we liked about it was that she had trimmed it out nicely with rims and a smoked license plate cover. Nothing we would ever spend money to do, but sharp looking, especially the rims. We noticed the first few weeks we had it that young guys, especially African American kids, would actually back-up when stopped in traffic to look at the car. They were shocked to find a middle aged, gray-haired white woman behind the wheel. And one day, so was Metro... Heading home from meeting me for lunch, my wife was pulled over in Hermitage. She was in a stretch of Lebanon Road known as the "Bonnas" where at the time there was some daytime drug activity. Note the ...

I'm posing a question here. I'm not being critical or making a point, other than to say that I have a question. I've noticed in our 25 year old daughter and in co-workers of a similar vintage a generational value of authenticity. "Being real" is short-hand for baring your soul or expressing unvarnished, uncensored feelings to others regardless of how they receive that information. Combined with the growing ubiquitous presence of social media, you can now gain and lose friends with lightening speed by saying what you really feel. At the risk of self-identifying as being old school, I find this noteworthy from both a generational and geographic perspective. I was not only raised in the south, but raised southern. My dad is from Kentucky and my mom is from Mississippi. Dad is from a tiny town in the western part of the state, and mom was raised by a school teacher and a minister. The southern value of that day was propriety and discretion above all else. I...