Will the much-hyped employee mass exit be Exodus 2.0?

What if they had an employee exodus and nobody came? That’s what we’re seeing so far, as dire forecasts of a massive number of dissatisfied employees walking away from their jobs have yet to materialize. Some experts predicted it would happen as early as February, others said March, still others left the possibility open for any time in 2010.

In some ways, this prediction didn’t seem too far-fetched. As Megaforce’s Megablog put it:

It’s not unusual for employees to leave a job after a downturn, quite simply because improving conditions typically result in more job opportunities opening up. However, many factors point to the strong possibility of massive employee turnover in 2010. According to the CareerBuilder survey, about 1 in 5 workers plan to leave their current job this year. OK, we all know the 80-20 rule. Which 20% of your workers do you think is planning on leaving? It’s a good bet that the ones leaving are the ones you’d like to keep.

That last bit strikes the same chord that much of the arm-waving on this matter has hit over and over again: “Watch out, employers, if your workers are unhappy, they’re about to revolt!”

Back in January, a study by the Australian recruitment firm Chandler Macleod Group found about 95 percent of the survey’s 930 participants were looking for work, with 73 percent actively looking and 57 percent believing they were within about 90 days of finding a new job.

“Employee exodus” became the watchword across countries and industries, triggering alarm in the U.S., Britain, Australia, India and other countries , and leading outlets as far-flung as Lawyers Weekly to project the possible effects on their field.

The gist for those who subscribe to this mass exodus theory is that employees have been beaten down by the recession and beaten up by their employers, and want a fresh start. Yahoo! Hotjobs conducted their own survey back in December with 806 hiring managers and recruiters, 44 percent of whom predicted a rush to the exits by workers. Wrote Larry Buhl:

As an example of how hard it may be to keep top talent in 2010, Mark Anderson, president and chief economist for ExecuNet, told Yahoo HotJobs that 90% of executives will now take calls from executive recruiters, a sign that more of them are now considering other options.

In an article for LiveCareer, Maria Hanson referred to a survey by Harris Interactive that found most workers are unhappy with their job, with 66 percent dissatisfied with their pay and benefits, 76 percent dissatisfied with their current opportunity for growth in their job, and 78 percent dissatisfied with their employer’s effort to keep them. Hanson sees the coming shake-up as a great opportunity for workers, advising them to aim for promotions and raises, and move on if they don’t feel they’re getting what they deserve. She has a warning for employers, too:

Career experts anticipate that this job dissatisfaction will translate into a mass exodus once the economy turns around. When more jobs become available, employees will be more than happy to leave behind job stagnation and flagging wages to hunt for better employment opportunities. Companies that don’t make changes now should be prepared to lose even their top employees. “We’re surprised to see how many companies have not improved [employee relations] during the recession, but have become more Draconian,” says HR specialist Glen Earl. “Those types of companies will see massive turnover.”

But why haven’t we seen any indication of this shake-up yet? The obvious answer is that the economic recovery simply hasn’t materialized as quickly as many expected, and much of the gains so far have been infamously “jobless.” But another possibility may be that while the recession has caused workers around the world no end of frustration and worry, they may be more sympathetic to their employers’ own tough situation than their current level of stated dissatisfaction indicates.

None of this is to say that the Great Employee Exodus of 2010 isn’t still yet to come. But for right now, it’s still no more than a fantasy for a recession-battered workforce.

Is there hope for salary recovery after the recession?

No one is certain how long the current economic downturn will last, but if that weren’t bad enough, economic experts are starting to ask the hard questions that come afterwards. For example, will the job market return to normal — or will we have to settle for a “new normal”?

It’s beginning to seem a bit like an earthquake: the 30 seconds of shaking that gets your attention, followed by the long-term damage discovered later. The recession has shaken everyone up, and now there’s a lot of scrambling to figure out if workers are going to have to adjust their expectations for a long time to come.

One of the hottest topics is salary, and Glassdoor.com just tackled the issue, saying:

Globalization, increased computing power, and a dramatic shift in consumer spending have organizations radically overhauling the way they get work done. Companies are getting significant increases in productivity while customer demand remains weak. So companies are likely to hire fewer people coming out of this recession, and employment may remain depressed until beyond 2012. This has real-world implications for job seekers and job holders. Some people have advised downgrading job-search expectations and playing it safe with career moves. Others have recommended the exact opposite approach, saying now is the time to reinvent yourself and your career.

Since opinions are so wide-ranging, Glassdoor convened a panel of their own experts. Luckily, the idea they all share is not so much that workers need to expect smaller paychecks or derailed careers in the wake of the recession. What they all do acknowledge is that the landscape will be changed, and more than ever before, workers will have to take a good hard look at what their skills are and where those skills fit into the marketplace.

For some, that could mean staying put. For others, it could mean a whole new line of work. Rusty Rueff had one of the best quotes:

“Now is not the time to ‘run away’ from a job. Many job changes are catalyzed by unhappiness or discontent. Take ten deep breaths before you make that motivated move. That said, there are jobs to ‘run to’ because they are doing what you want to do, where you want to do it, with the people you want to do it with.”

If re-invention is in your future, these experts say the best thing to do is face up to it and move on before you’re moved on. And Hank Stringer had a mantra for the frustrated job searcher: “Companies will hire in an improving market.”

Over at Compensation Café, Ann Bares has an interesting reading of the latest research on this topic. She references Buck Consultants’ recent survey, “Recovery, Restoration and Retention: 2010 Compensation Trends.”

That report was interesting—downright shocking, in fact—in that it found 58 percent of employers surveyed plan to award bonuses that are within 5 percent of last year’s amount. The conclusion made by the researchers behind it is that an unexpected number of companies are hitting their targets, and compensation is on the rebound (the survey found salary increases for 2010 average 2.2 percent).

Bares focuses on the 30 percent of employers who say they plan to use market-based salary adjustments to retain their top people. Her take is that salaries will “catch up” to the recovery, but that unlike past downturns where there was a flurry of activity driving the labor market to and even beyond its previous levels…

…there will be market salary adjustment activity as the economy rebounds, but it will be more focused and selective than what we saw in past cycles.  Employers will invest salary dollars more cautiously than in the past, and they will continue to draw on other cash and non-cash elements to retain and reward their people.  Employers will also, however, respond to the reality of the rebounding value of those employees whose performance and/or skill set makes them critical to retain … and this means (almost inevitably, I think) adjustments to their base pay.

Once again, a bit of a mixed bag for the workforce. Is there a silver lining on the salary front? Probably for some, but we may not get the big-bang kind of recovery we’ve all been hoping for.

The survey shows IT salary data by geographic region.

It used to be that IT was the recession-proof career. No matter how bad things got, the conventional wisdom went, companies would always be willing to compete for high-level systems experts to manage their information technology. The alternative would be to risk lost data, network crashes and email disconnects, and who would want to risk that?

But nothing in this current recession has been typical, and now it looks like it’s IT’s turn to take a hit. The resource site TechRepublic and the IT training company Global Knowledge released their newest joint survey of the industry this month, and it doesn’t paint a pretty picture.

Two stats in particular jump right off the page. First, gains in IT salary averages have skidded to a halt after years of rapid growth; second, most IT professionals suddenly aren’t getting raises, and over 10 percent are taking cuts. As the report sums up:

The recession has held salaries in check for the IT profession. The average salary for respondents was $82,115, up less than one percent over what was reported in the 2009 IT Skills and Salary Report. This is significantly less than the 10% gain seen between 2008 and 2009; however, it is consistent with broader salary trends in the United States. Less than half of this year’s respondents (43%) reported receiving a salary increase, down from 70% in the prior year. Two-thirds of those that reported receiving a raise indicated the primary reason was performance in their current position (65%). Over 46% indicated their salaries were capped without a raise. One in nine respondents (11%) indicated their salaries had been reduced.”

In terms of percentages, this is significant shrinkage. Compared to 2008, the numbers look even worse, with a 37 percent drop in employees receiving raises, and a 10 percent drop in employees receiving bonuses.

There is a little hope, in that salary growth, while small, is still on the plus side. Also, IT professionals have been able to hold onto the gains they’ve made over the last few years: the average bonus was up from $3,937 in 2008 to $8,654 in 2010, and the average raise was up from 4 percent in 2008, and 6 percent in 2009 to 10 percent in 2010.

Other trends reflected how IT jobs are now a lot more like every other job, in that they reflected the same somewhat contradictory attitudes that studies of other industries have revealed in this recession. Despite the setbacks, most IT workers—70 percent, in fact—reported they were satisfied with their job, with over 40 percent saying they were “very” or “extremely” satisfied. This seems to reflect the “just happy to be here” view that we’ve seen throughout the U.S. workforce on a larger scale. But about a third of the 19,500 workers surveyed said they were exploring other opportunities.

Ralph Haas at MyPath found another message in the report: that ongoing education is more important than ever. “Training / continuing education matters,” he writes. “All other things equal, annual salaries are $3 - $9K higher among those respondents who took IT training last year. Top certification draws include PMP, CCNA, MCP, MCSE, and ITIL v3. Average salary for those with PMP certification was over $100K, placing folks with this credential in the top 20% of salaries in the industry.”

The survey, though it claims the results are fairly consistent with past years, has a pointed warning to IT professionals tucked away in its conclusion: More than ever, performance is being closely scrutinized. The industry, perhaps, no longer enjoys the same protections it once did:

In reviewing the 2010 survey data, one of the most interesting discoveries was the consistency with previous years’ surveys, particularly in the relationship between job performance and salary. Respondents and their managers agree that training that leads to certification improves job performance. This increase in employee effectiveness is critical to note as budgets begin to return to previous levels but still remain under scrutiny. The key, then, to job security and increasing one’s salary, as born out in the data, is improving personal job performance.

It's a small world for a lot of analysts looking at the hiring outlook.

Four times a year, the release of Manpower Inc.’s Employment Outlook Survey defines the mood on hiring trends around the world. Based on interviews with 61,000 employers, the survey has become possibly the most trusted barometer on the worldwide job market over its nearly half a century in existence.

The key word there is “worldwide.” The EOS takes a snapshot of employer attitudes in 36 countries and territories around the globe. And yet, for some reason, most of the analysis of the survey is still remarkably provincial, and with the release this month of the newest numbers, it’s more of the same.

American news outlets tend to zero in on the news for their own metropolitan market, or at best the U.S. outlook as a whole, sometimes completely ignoring the data from other parts of the world. And it’s not just a Yankee ego thing—other countries are just as guilty of ignoring the bigger picture in favor of the hometown stats.

That’s understandable to some degree; we all have a natural inclination to care more about what’s going on in our own backyard. And providing a breakdown to the local level can be especially useful due to the sheer amount of data packed into this report.

There are so many competing numbers, in fact, that different analysts can paint entirely different pictures of the hiring outlook. Daniele Sahr of The Huffington Post, for instance, writes of the U.S. employment picture: “Are we nearing a rebound in hiring? If the anecdotal evidence is any indication, we certainly are. According to Manpower’s quarterly Employment Outlook Survey, hiring in almost every sector is about to get better.” That’s because employers in 12 out of 13 industry sectors reported that they will add staff in the second quarter of 2010. (Once again, it was bad news for the government sector, which was the unlucky thirteenth.)

But others, like Mark Fightmaster at bloggingstocks.com, had a far less exuberant take on the U.S. numbers, writing of the current hiring outlook that: “While this percentage is better than the same quarter a year ago, it is virtually flat from the first quarter. In fact, it is down slightly, as a net 6% of firms hired in the first quarter.” That’s because about two-thirds of U.S. employers said they plan to keep staffing levels flat.

Overall, the consensus is that hiring levels are inching up in the U.S. At a seasonally adjusted five percent, there’s a moderate uptick in expectations for hiring in the U.S., as the adjusted outlook at this time last year was –2 percent.

However, that’s only in the U.S. What is far less reported is that if we take a look at the bigger global picture, there is some interesting information about new markets around the world.

The strongest year-over-year outlooks are coming from India, which reports a whopping net employment outlook of 39 percent, with hiring expected across all geographic regions and industrial sectors.

Brazil, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, Peru and Costa Rica are also reporting very strong hiring expectations. The entire Asia Pacific region (with the exception of Japan) looks strong for job growth, and a modest improvement is projected throughout the Americas.

Overall, employers in 27 of 36 countries and territories expect some positive hiring activity in the second quarter, with only eight reporting negative hiring expectations. Last year, 18 countries and territories were reporting negative outlooks. Based on Manpower’s latest, it’s clear that the global job picture is improving.

I’ve had the privilege of speaking with analysts and editors from organizations like Gartner, Aberdeen and Human Resource Executive over the past several days to tell them about the latest generation of RiseSmart’s outplacement solution, Transition Concierge 3.0. We’ve been gratified and humbled by the response.

One analyst credited us with reenergizing the $3+ billion outplacement market. Another said our solution was unlike anything else he’d seen.

Here’s an excerpt from our press release on Transition Concierge 3.0:

Transition Concierge 3.0 significantly expands the capabilities of the original Transition Concierge service, launched in 2008, with an improved state-of-the-art CRM interface, which employees use to manage their participation in the Transition Concierge program. Through RiseSmart CRM, employees are able to access a wealth of job search and career management tools and services.

A primary distinction of Transition Concierge 3.0, compared to traditional outplacement service offerings, is that the solution provides highly personalized job leads to each employee on a weekly basis. RiseSmart uses proprietary aggregation and semantic search technology to match each employee’s job preferences against hundreds of thousands of active job listings across the Web. Then, a specialist assigned to the employee’s account hones these results by hand — ensuring that only pertinent leads are delivered to each employee.

Specific components of RiseSmart CRM include:

• Activity Dashboard: The central hub of information and the first page the employee sees after signing in to the site, the Activity Dashboard includes job search status updates, notifications of to-do items and job leads, and a snapshot of recommended events, blogs and articles.
• Job Preferences: Employees enter preferences (industry, job title, location, etc.) that are used to determine which job leads the employee will receive. The employee can upload a resume and/or enter detailed additional background information, which RiseSmart’s support team utilizes to better match the employee with search results.
• Resume Wizard: Each employee receives a professionally written resume as part of the service. The Resume Wizard captures information about employee accomplishments and experiences that a certified professional resume writer then uses, in conjunction with one-on-one consultation, to craft a new resume.
• Job Inbox: Employees receive job leads each week in their Job Inbox. The employee can apply directly to jobs from the inbox. Employees also can manage and organize their job search to show jobs they have applied or interviewed for, and to add notes and follow-up reminders.
• LinkedIn Integration: The Job Inbox features LinkedIn integration, enabling the employee to view and network with LinkedIn contacts at any company posting a job opening.
• Job Rating Engine: To improve the leads they receive on an ongoing basis, employees can rate individual job leads. This feedback is incorporated into future searches.

RiseSmart effectively uses the Web and the phone to provide a superior quality of high-tech and high-touch service, matching individuals to the right Transition Specialists and certified resume writers from our virtual network, allowing us to deliver a consistent level of service across the country. An employee has access to one-on-one assistance during every step of the job-finding process.

Measurable ROI for Employers

Because all interaction with Transition Concierge 3.0 can be monitored online, employers can accurately track program participation levels, job leads delivered to each employee, and employees placed in new jobs.

With RiseSmart, employees find new jobs nearly twice as fast as the national average, significantly reducing severance costs, unemployment taxes, and other layoff-related expenditures. According to 2009 data from the Institute for Corporate Productivity, the cost of Transition Concierge 3.0 is about half that of traditional services.

Below are a couple of screen caps from the Transition Concierge user interface. If you would like a full demo of the Transition Concierge service, e-mail us here.

Employees can manage and organize their job search to show jobs they have applied or interviewed for, and to add notes and follow-up reminders.

The Job Inbox features LinkedIn integration, enabling the employee to view and network with LinkedIn contacts at any company posting a job opening.

HR professionals shouldn't have to walk a tightrope.

Liz Ryan has written a passionate plea to companies everywhere, arguing that human resource professionals need room to re-invent their jobs. Her prescription, in a nutshell, is fewer forms, more innovation. A human resources vet since “Cyndi Lauper ruled the airwaves,” she doesn’t paint a pretty picture of what HR has to deal with these days. HR departments have both an image problem and a work overload to contend with, she says, and they’re often put in an impossible position:

Now HR people are besieged. They are embattled. Employees hate them, management hates them, and jobseekers hate them most of all. It’s no fun being an HR person with many, many employers today. HR people are the bad guys. They make the rules and enforce them, they’re forced to take away perks and benefits and they lay people off on a regular basis. HR people still talk about Engaging Employees with the Mission, creating cultural Pixie Dust, and making their organizations Employers of Choice, but they don’t say it with as much force as they used to. If they did, their co-workers would laugh out loud or suck their teeth in disgust.

What went wrong, Ryan contends, is that management for the most part simply stopped listening to their HR staff’s best ideas. Turning HR into the “policy police” didn’t help either, in her estimation. Her article is a sobering read, but she also articulates a shining hope for human resources:

I look forward to the economic uptick that will lower unemployment and remind CEOs why they ever hired forward-looking HR people.  I can’t wait for the day when employers are fighting over talent, when sharp and human-focused HR leaders don’t despair for their profession. I’m eager to hear how innovative HR managers will spur collaboration, non-linear thinking and team-and-individual greatness in their shops.

That last sentence in particular is an excellent summation of the contribution that great human resources staffers can make. Let’s hope Ryan’s article gets in front of the right people.

In the meantime, Kris Dunn has his own ideas for how HR types can make things better right away, and it starts with a little tough truth. A human resources professional, Dunn believes there are five lies in HR that are holding back departments everywhere. The worst myth, he thinks, is that HR is responsible for employees’ work/life balance. He remembers Jack Welsh stirring up a hornet’s nest at the HR conference in New Orleans last year when he said “there’s no such thing as work/life balance, there are work/life choices.” At the time, his remarks were seen as insensitive, particularly to women in the corporate world who take time off for family. But Dunn says:

The truth: Employees are responsible for their own work/life balance, and if they want more money, promotions and fame, they’re going to have to work harder than those around them…If you happen to be a team member reading this, the reality is that the business world is chaotic, and everyone’s winging it, to a certain extent. Most companies try to staff at levels relative to the work at hand (more revenue always helps in that regard), but it’s always going to feel like a free-for-all at times.

This is tough-love stuff, for sure, and his other top myths aren’t any easier to swallow: companies always want to provide the best possible benefits for all employees (“if we had any guts,” he writes, “we’d tell employees: ‘We’re not Mom.’”); excellent performance is always rewarded financially; companies always want the best and the brightest; everyone’s always equal in the workplace.

It’s possible to not agree with all of Dunn’s points and still take away an important message: when it comes to making their jobs better, there are simple (if radical) things that HR professionals can do to help themselves. Until employers embrace Ryan’s human resources utopia, that may be the best start for beleaguered staffers.

When looking for a career transition, consider the warning signs.

Last time, we considered where job seekers or those looking to make a career transition might look for an industry with huge upside. But there are plenty of industries staring at a steep downside right now, as well, and it can be just as important to know where not to look for a job right now. It’s also worth considering if your own field is topping the not-hot job lists right now.

The Department of Labor has targeted 10 careers it expects to have the largest wage and employment declines through 2018. According to the government, department stores, topping the list, are likely to have lost 159,000 jobs between 2008 and 2018. That’s 10 percent of the industry! Right behind them are semiconductor and other electronic component manufacturers, with a staggering one-third of jobs projected to be lost in that same time period. Auto parts manufacturers, postal workers, printers, sewing-apparel providers, newspaper employees, miners, gas attendants and wired-telecom workers are all expected to take a huge hit.

Besides fair warning for anyone considering those fields, the news is bound to mean anxiety for anyone currently in those fields. Yahoo! Hotjobs’ Margaret Steen has some advice :

What should you do if your industry is on this list? First, don’t panic. The job declines in these industries are projected to take place over a decade. And many jobs—a majority in most of these industries—will remain even after 10 years.

Still, it’s good to start thinking about Plan B. Build your savings and start researching what other industries might be able to use your skills. If you’re nearing retirement and had been planning to move into a different field, you might want to make the move earlier. And if you have many years of work ahead of you, you should consider seriously whether it’s feasible for you to stay in your industry for the long term.

When thinking about careers to avoid,there’s also careercast.com’s list of 10 worst careers for 2010. Since most people probably aren’t even sure what a “roustabout” is (an oil rig or pipeline worker), there’s very little chance of accidentally winding up with the survey’s top worst job. Lumberjack, ironworker, dairy famer, welder, garbage collector, taxi driver, construction worker, meter reader and mail carrier rounded out the list.

One of those fields in particular has been making the news lately, and not in a good way. Just last week, Peter L. Mosca of realtytimes.com reported that:

For the first time since the start of the economic downturn, every state and the District of Columbia reported losing construction jobs over the past twelve months, according to a new analysis of state-by-state employment data released by the Associated General Contractors of America. The research found few signs of a construction industry recovery with only six states reporting construction job increases between November and December 2009.

The online ad research and consulting firm Borrell Associates made their projections for best and worst industries for job openings in 2010, and they had grim news for the retail industry, which they expected to grow a meager 1.3 percent. The outlook for federal government jobs and financial services was even worse, with projected losses of 3 percent of jobs and 12 percent of jobs, respectively.

Finally, if all this news about where not to work starts getting you down, check out the hilarious (and merciless) Avoid This Job site.  It’s not just funny, it’s good advice.

Could one of these growing industries be the road to a new career?

Job seekers often hear that despite the continuing rise in unemployment, the bleak hiring outlook, and the uncertainty of a drawn-out economic recovery, they shouldn’t worry because “there are still jobs out there!”

They’re meant as words of encouragement, of course, but at a certain point, an exasperated job hunter can’t be blamed for wanting to yell “Oh yeah? Where?”

Where, indeed. Since the mid-90s, there has been plenty of research to go around about the best careers for each new year, and the rise of the Internet has only increased the number of outlets putting the job market under a microscope. At a certain point, in fact, the problem becomes too much information. It can be difficult to get any practical job-search wisdom without looking at a cross-section of the most reliable sources and looking for trends.

The best place to start in any given year is U.S. News & World Report’s annual list of the 50 best careers. Among their top choices for 2010 are: computer software engineer, x-ray technician, firefighter and financial advisor. The magazine’s list is useful because it divides the careers into categories, and one of those categories in particular—health care—has been a fixture on most lists of rapidly expanding job opportunities for several years running now.

Some may consider many of the careers they cover simply too specialized to be useful. However, they do make an interesting point about the field of science and technology:

This category includes the fastest-growing occupation—with a 72 percent growth rate that far outstrips the 10 percent average across careers — of biomedical engineer. Biomedical engineers help develop the equipment and devices that improve or enable the preservation of health. They’re working to grow cardiac tissue or develop tomorrow’s MRI machines, asthma inhalers, and artificial hearts.

Of particular note are two careers that are popping up on a lot of these lists: physical therapist and actuary. The former was also the number two choice for Jessica Hanley in her Yahoo! Hotjobs look at the most “surprising paths to fortune and fulfillment.” One of the biggest selling points for a physical therapy career, besides the fact that many such businesses are expanding into idle commercial space while the overall job market shrinks, is that it generally takes only two years to get the associate’s degree in physical therapy necessary to become a physical therapist assistant. There is expected to be a 33 percent growth in the field over the next eight years. Elementary school teacher, graphic designer and registered nurse also topped Hanley’s list.

Payscale.com’s Carol Tice also discusses physical therapy assistants—along with occupational therapy, sales positions, green jobs, repair technicians and computer security specialists–in her list of growing jobs in the small-business sector for 2010. Tice writes:

If you’ve been focusing your job search on major corporations, you may be missing out on the hottest hiring spot in our slowly dawning economic recovery: small business. Small businesses employ just over half of all private-sector workers, according to the Small Business Administration, and they generated 64 percent of all net new jobs over the past 15 years. Historically, as businesses start to hire again coming out of a downturn, small businesses lead the way.

Then there’s careercast.com’s list of the 10 best jobs for 2010, led by the aforementioned actuary. Computer fields take the next two spots—software analyst and computer systems analyst, respectively—while the rankings of mathematician, statistician and accountant show math skills are always in demand. Incredibly, only one health care field made the top ten: dental hygienist. Perhaps the biggest surprise is historian, at number five, which earned points for a strong hiring outlook, low stress level and healthy income.

Of course, the flip side of these bright spots on the job landscape is that there are plenty of careers in freefall, which anyone looking to transition might want to avoid. We’ll take a look at those next.