27 Feb 2007
Production breakdown
A few years ago I’ve read a book by Roger McBride Allen in which he presented a concept he named knowledge breakdown. McBride predicted that as technology and science continued to advance, the human society would reach a point in which it could no longer effectively use any new information it created.
His argument was that the length of time needed to train a given professional would be so long, that it would require most of his professional life, and would result in cases where people went straight from training to retirement without actually working a single day.
I found knowledge breakdown to be a very cool idea, and not one that is impossible to envision in the far future; After all, training times are becoming longer. Furthermore, the time an employee needs in order to settle down in a new company is also becoming longer, as her tasks become more complex.
Last July I attended Microsoft’s Partner Conference in Boston and had the pleasure of sitting in a session presented by Beverly Kaye, the owner of Career Systems International. She spoke of employee retention in an environment where skilled employees are becoming both scarcer and less easy to motivate.
Mrs. Kaye presented research that indicated a global trend towards employee dissatisfaction which results in 70%-80% of employees being either not engaged (not enthusiastically pursuing their goals and targets) or disengaged (actively poisoning the workplace atmosphere). Only 20% of employees were happy, motivated and full of drive (engaged). As a manager I can attest that it is more difficult to engage and drive your team forward, when the job market is sizzling with new offers on a daily basis. The result is shorter average employee tenure.
Combined with the ever increasing amount of time it takes for a new employee to integrate into the workplace I am reminded again of McBride’s Knowledge Breakdown, with a twist; If increasing employee integration time collides with ever decreasing tenure, the result could be a Production Breakdown, where an employee leaves her job for a new one before producing enough to cover the expenses of recruiting her in the first place. Sounds like something that will never happen? That’s what they said about global warming.
The marketplace will have to adapt to these trends. Businesses will demand proof from candidates that they have a high average tenure; perhaps sign contracts that include fines for early quitting. Employees that can show a track record of holding down a job will have an advantage and would probably get better terms.
The crunch of it is that although businesses consider the candidate’s average tenure in the past as a factor when hiring, we will see a drastic increase in the importance given to this parameter in the future.
A few years ago I’ve read a book by Roger McBride Allen in which he presented a concept he named knowledge breakdown. McBride predicted that as technology and science continued to advance, the human society would reach a point in which it could no longer effectively use any new information it created.
His argument was that the length of time needed to train a given professional would be so long, that it would require most of his professional life, and would result in cases where people went straight from training to retirement without actually working a single day.
I found knowledge breakdown to be a very cool idea, and not one that is impossible to envision in the far future; After all, training times are becoming longer. Furthermore, the time an employee needs in order to settle down in a new company is also becoming longer, as her tasks become more complex.
Last July I attended Microsoft’s Partner Conference in Boston and had the pleasure of sitting in a session presented by Beverly Kaye, the owner of Career Systems International. She spoke of employee retention in an environment where skilled employees are becoming both scarcer and less easy to motivate.
Mrs. Kaye presented research that indicated a global trend towards employee dissatisfaction which results in 70%-80% of employees being either not engaged (not enthusiastically pursuing their goals and targets) or disengaged (actively poisoning the workplace atmosphere). Only 20% of employees were happy, motivated and full of drive (engaged). As a manager I can attest that it is more difficult to engage and drive your team forward, when the job market is sizzling with new offers on a daily basis. The result is shorter average employee tenure.
Combined with the ever increasing amount of time it takes for a new employee to integrate into the workplace I am reminded again of McBride’s Knowledge Breakdown, with a twist; If increasing employee integration time collides with ever decreasing tenure, the result could be a Production Breakdown, where an employee leaves her job for a new one before producing enough to cover the expenses of recruiting her in the first place. Sounds like something that will never happen? That’s what they said about global warming.
The marketplace will have to adapt to these trends. Businesses will demand proof from candidates that they have a high average tenure; perhaps sign contracts that include fines for early quitting. Employees that can show a track record of holding down a job will have an advantage and would probably get better terms.
The crunch of it is that although businesses consider the candidate’s average tenure in the past as a factor when hiring, we will see a drastic increase in the importance given to this parameter in the future.
מאת shamshins נושאים 
Information Breakdown, Production Breakdown, Trends 
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