A Hunger For Personal Development
The future is around the corner, it has been 20 years since we all jumped into the new millennium our eyes filled with fear, joy, and hope. 2019 is more than half over and we find ourselves looking forward to the year 2020 with anticipation of what the next decade will bring. Although several areas pique the interest of many people about the future from economics to global disaster; the one area that has the greatest impact on daily life for most people is the workforce.
According to the Pew Research article 5 ways the U.S. Workforce has Changed, a Decade Since the Great Recession Began the workforce is smaller, more diverse, older, shifting toward service jobs and people stay unemployed longer. As many people know technology has contributed to some of these changes but, technology is only a small part of the story. During our current decade as human beings and as a society we have changed in ways that are quite radical from past generations, we are experiencing a rebirth of what and how we think of work.
Like you, I am excited and concerned about what is to come as we move into this future age where the things we thought would never happen or could not happen, now do happen. What shall we expect and how do we prepare ourselves for work?
I spoke with Taryell Simmons who is an Entrepreneur, community activist, workforce consultant, and HR trainer recognized as one of the most prominent voices for diversity and inclusion in the workforce. He is the Co-Founder of EvoGrant, Workforce Development Specialist at SAGE business & Education and a Founding Member of the San Diego Tech Hub. For the past five years, Mr. Simmons has helped create and develop workforce programs like “CONNECT2Careers” to help people in under-served communities get living-wage jobs. Mr. Simmons believes that successful careers come from being connected to one’s strengths, abilities, skills, and passion. He has dedicated his career to exposing people to opportunities that will help them figure out paths to combine their talents with a career they love. Mr. Simmons is a RISE Urban Leadership Institute graduate.
The workforce looks different, acts different and thinks different in 2019. In PWC’s report Millennials at Work Reshaping the Workforce, the company conducted a survey that analyzed how the forces of globalism, technology, socio-political and demographic changes would affect the way businesses operated and the work experiences of Millennials. By the next year 2020, Millennials one of the largest generations will be about 50% of the workforce. This generation has a strong influence not seen since the defining years of the Baby Boomers. The influx of the Millennial generation has touched almost every fabric of our society.
Millennials are known as the technology-driven generation and lead the communities in the international tech hub of Silicon Valley. During our time together Mr. Simmons told me how one of his family members planning to relocate started to feel the push of an extreme new normal in the Bay area in California, “Now with the Bay area being the tech hub, the cost of living has gone up and skyrocketed. The crazy thing is that, if you’re making six figures, you’re considered in the poverty line in the Bay area.”
Considering how much a person might have to work to make six figures and still be considered barely getting by, it led me to ask about work-life balance. Does this new workforce not want it? Mr. Simmons helped reframe my thinking.
“I think it’s all subjective, each generation, in the workplace looks at work-life balance differently. Millennials grew up on technology, so technology is important to them at the workplace. They see this as an extension of who they are. They need to have access to technology to be efficient and to be fulfilled in their work and that is a balance to them. Previous generations who didn’t grow-up in the dotcom era or who were at the cusp of it, work-life balance to them means the flexibility of being able to spend time with family and be free from work.
Still, other portions of the new generation want work to be an extension of who they are, meaning work with a purpose. It’s all different for everybody on how they view work-life balance. What I will say is that the market will demand more flexibilities and companies will have to start thinking about work-life balance differently and how they interact with employees and what that looks like for the different generations and be able to understand the different values of the people coming in and out of the workforce.”
Another trend on the rise is that many people are working to create their work-life balance as contractors, freelancers or remote workers.
“You see that same kind of shift going on around the world as people define what work-life balance looks like to them. You no longer see people thriving to be in a company for a long time or being a slave to a company. If they can’t get the kind of work-life they want out of the company, they’re going to create their own with this new economy of entrepreneurs and contract services.”
Gig Economy
This new economy that Simmons refers to is often referred to as the “Gig Economy” which according to the National Association of Counties is easily defined as a shift in the way Americans view work. Instead of a more traditional system where a worker works full-time for only one employer, some workers choose to enter the gig economy for the flexibility, freedom and personal fulfillment that it provides them.
The beauty of this new model says Simmons, “You can contract somebody for their services for the labor you want, for a little place in the market for the time that you need, allowing you to have a lean business.”
The drivers of this growing movement in the workforce stem from a need for work-life balance, a new period of entrepreneurial enlightenment through technology and socio-economic instability.
“The needs of businesses are changing with the advancements of technology, the cost of living, and companies filling the workforce gap because of retiring Baby Boomers. For example, Baby Boomers are retiring out, and companies have to find employees. Often these are middle management positions, and companies may have to bring in a Millennials with less experience, which creates a skill gap because of lack of knowledge. We also have a new generation (iGen / Gen Z ) that are coming in that we have not quite prepared to integrate into the workforce.”
Preparing for the Next Workers
As businesses brace themselves for the changes ahead that technology has created, it has become imperative to find the right workers with the technological know-how to stay competitive. Along with staying on top of offering their products or services at new industry standards and expectations of speed and efficiency; companies must now also provide customer service with “personality” so that as a company they can stand out in the online community reviews.
This “personality”, often referred to as soft skills require a lot of emotional intelligence which is the one skill that the Millennial and the Z generation of workers are often missing. Soft skills are people skills, social skills, communication skills, social intelligence, and emotional intelligence. According to a survey conducted by Wonderlic called Hard Facts About Soft Skills more than half of the employers believe that soft skills are essential for securing a job and retaining it.
I asked Simmons where can students and workers get soft skills; how can people get help?
“Educators can help students prepare for the future by looking at more skill-based training. The big one that we see with the generation coming in is a lack of soft skills. The lack of soft skills, we’re talking about; being able to communicate on teams, business acumen, business writing, basic communication, things of that nature. Some of that has been lost due to technology, where it’s made it easier for us to connect electronically, but it’s made it harder for us to connect as human beings.
I say this because sometimes we’ll have people come into the workforce and they can be highly educated, but their emotional IQ is low. They don’t know how to communicate, manage, or to work with others because maybe they’re used to communicating online, which is a different type of communication. Soft skills are based on building relationships and being able to read people in a room and knowing how your own emotions may be affecting the productivity of workers. I think we need to take it back to interpersonal skill basics, and not just focus on technical skills.
How employers can prepare for employees of the future is “talent development”. I teach workshops on promoting an inclusive workplace, embracing diversity inclusion at the workplace, generations in the workplace, effective feedback, how great leaders get results, analytical thinking, tactical thinking skills. These are the things I teach regularly to employees, even senior development and senior management because you don’t know what you don’t know, right? It’s good to have that refresher because sometimes you forget the little things that make a difference and how people communicate and work with each other.”
Another point highlighted by Simmons is that people will need to take a personal assessment of themselves and not feel pressured to go with what is being pushed by society in the career market.
“Everyone is going to college. I think No Child Left Behind left some kids behind because everybody wasn’t meant for college. Everybody doesn’t want to go to college. So, now it left a deficit in the trade fields. For example, I recently worked at a community college and was part of a workforce team to create programs to get trades and apprentices back into community colleges and high schools. There’s a deficit of ironworkers, and there are always new buildings going up. They need ironworkers to put the frameworks in for ships and buildings. They couldn’t find enough of these guys.
In training, they make anywhere from 20 dollars an hour to 26 dollars an hour. After training, the average ironworker made anywhere from 36 dollars an hour up to 60 dollars an hour if they were to get shipped overseas to work on a project because there’s not enough of them. They get all their living allowances paid for, and they would get pension packages. This is good work. It’s hard work with your hands and labor, but if a young person loves that, then why don’t we encourage them to take that career path. It could feed their family and provide a good living, maybe even more than some college degree jobs.”
How did the lack of soft skills develop?
“Standardized testing was an issue because students were so focused on the test, and teachers were so focused on the test that they weren’t doing a good job of teaching soft skills of communicating on teams, working and communicating, team building, working with each other, things of that nature. So, when kids come out, they’re so focused on competing against the technical aspects, that they haven’t learned the basics of soft skills to be great communicators when they get into the workforce.
From an individual standpoint, a lot of things that I see in the future of the workforce is people may have started with one career because maybe, a high school teacher or guidance counselor guided them to study a certain major which they thought was going to be their career path, and maybe they had an interest in it, or maybe they did it because somebody told them they need to make money. They get into this career path and they realize, it is not the career path for them.
So, they have a disconnect with their career. Usually, two things happen in the workforce when there’s a disconnect where you’re not connected to that job. Either you’re going to disconnect from that job, or that job is going to disconnect from you. You’re no longer the best person to do that job. So, when you’re re looking at getting back into whatever career you want to get into, I usually tell people, start with why.
Starting with why will help you sit back and say, Why do I want to get into this career? Then hopefully you answer the questions that will allow you to get back to a passion or a focus, or helping others, whatever that thing is. Once you get down to that, do you have the knowledge skills and abilities to be in that career? And if not, how do you get the knowledge, skills, and abilities?
Whether it be a training program, education, on the job training, apprenticeship. A degree is not necessarily the best route for every career. We’ve put a lot of emphasis on that in our education system, but I think we need to go look at different models because that model doesn’t work for everyone.”
Talent Development Moving Forward
According to the 2017 Gallup State of the Global Workforce, 85% of workers worldwide are not engaged or are actively disengaged in their job. In fact, in the report, it states that global productivity growth is on the decline but, there is hope if companies can learn and fix their models to be ones of high employee development.
“From the talent development standpoint, there are so many ways for employers to get engaged and bring their workforce through the door or upgrade their workforce. At the community college level, companies can be involved in the curriculum that’s going to shape the next workforce of students that come out of high schools and colleges, provide job shadows, internships, even staff training. This will reduce turnover, will assist with their recruiting and with their outsourcing. They’re spending so much money recruiting talent that they may not have in-house, in that state, and going to other states or countries to recruit top talent. They can just room it in-house and it probably cost them less to do that, it’s a tremendous amount of money they use for recruiting and outsourcing.”
The Global Workforce
These effects such as the decline of soft skills, ill-fitted opportunities, and disengaged employees are not isolated to the United States. Globally there is widespread joblessness still lingering years after the great recession. It seems people’s spirits have been dampened, they have less faith in companies and yearn for more personal growth and development.
According to another Gallup statistic, only 32% of people around the world have what is considered a “good job” meaning employed full-time by a large company and making a livable wage.
The high percentage of disengagement in the workforce has led to many indifferent workers as noted in the 2017 State of the Global Workforce. People put in the time at work, do their tasks but, have no passion for the work or even the company.
To combat these troubling statistics and trends Simmons points to an example of how entrepreneurship can change the global workforce, the global economy and motivate workers.
“I was talking to a friend of mine who goes back every year to the Congo to give time and help out on projects. We were talking about workforce development over there because he knew what I did, and he was looking for resources to give back to a community in the Congo. During his most recent experience as he went to visit a sugar cane farm, the farm serves a lot of the locals there in that area, but they lost out on so much business because they don’t have access to the internet, and they don’t know how to make a website.
Something as simple as getting them educated on how to build a website and how to use a computer would greatly change that whole community.”
Diversity Inclusion in the Workforce
“Nowadays, in a lot of cities, I see a big push around equity, and diversity inclusion. What we’ve learned over the past several years is that the more diverse and the more inclusive the workplace is, it creates better products, better services, and better quality.
I’ll give you an example. A representative of Google called me up about a year ago, and this was at the time when I was doing community outreach. This representative said, “We’re getting startups together and hosting these startup weekends in San Diego and we’re trying to increase the diversity at these events. We can recognize that you are somebody who is out in the community, and every time we have an event down here, we’re getting the same people, and we’d love to get some people of color. Could you help us spread the word?” I said, Yes. That’s something that I would love for people in the community to learn about and get more involved in.
Long story short, I participated with this project and at the end of the weekend pitched it to these Shark Tank investors and my team won. My team was one of the most diverse teams at the startup weekend. The reason why I believe we won, was because at the beginning of the challenge each of us had different ways in which we saw the world regarding this product and brought up questions that were good to ask.
I think that’s the most important thing companies will see when they start to take on this role of diversity inclusion … is that it is good for business. Companies won’t see only from a single-minded perspective. If done right, it can foster a very creative, collaborative, innovative workplace.”
Worker of the Future
“The worker of the future. What are they looking for? I would say flexibility, creativity, and autonomy that’s what I think the future workers are looking for. It’s kind of a hard question because, every generation wants something different, but I think, for the most part, something that stays consistent across the board is those three things.”
