Hiring and firing keeps getting harder
Hiring and firing are two words, actually three words that describe one of the toughest things about running almost any company.
Unlike profits and losses, three other words that describe another complex part of doing business, the act of finding, or getting rid of people is a difficult task and it’s getting harder and harder every day.
Hiring, as almost every company is now experiencing, is a challenge like rarely before. When there was once an abundance of qualified people looking for work, there’s now a drought when it comes to certain skills.
Who would have ever thought that it would be easier to find a company president than it is to find a welder, or that MBAs are now a dime dozen and that unemployed geologists are as rare as an unblemished diamond?
The fact is, certain skills are on the decline while at the same time, the need for them has never been greater. Again, take welders for example. Once considered one of the lowliest of ‘blue collar’ trades because of the dirt and heat associated with the job, they are now recognized as an invaluable resource in many manufacturing circles, and that includes mining. So valuable, in fact, that the next ‘white collar’ crime will (or probably already does) involve stealing ‘blue collars’ from each other.
Regardless, they’re a valuable commodity. Ask any mine super who he turns to when a part snaps on a machine or something has to be fabricated in an emergency field situation using only imagination and scraps of iron.
The President? The CFO? Certainly not the head of IT?
It’s the guy with the still-rolled Certificate in Welding from a community college who comes to the rescue.
Likewise, old-school geologists are popular again because, by their very nature, they’re actually willing to do site visits and bring back the real goods instead of relying on satellite images and seismographs to tell the story.
My point is, finding and hiring the people who made mining what it is today is tough but conversely, getting rid of the ‘dead wood’ in the industry is equally tough. Every company, regardless of the industry, is plagued with people who should be replaced but as every employer and almost every employee now knows, workers’ rights must not be tampered with and that’s why ‘firing’ has also made running a business tougher today.
Most employers remember the days when terminating someone simply meant providing them with a cardboard box and 20 minutes to clear out their office or locker. The inarguable word “restructuring” was used to replace “fired” during this process.
Today, however, the words “sue for wrongful dismissal” are part of almost every worker’s vocabulary and “restructuring” is no longer accepted without a fight.
As I said at the outset, hiring and firing are some of the toughest parts of doing business but until the world is totally run by machines, it’s something that every owner and manager will have to accept as one of the hard and ugly parts of doing business.
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