April 13, 2011

Edited and Written by Ira S. Wolfe

Published by Success Performance Solutions.

What's Inside this issue of The Total View:

1. Create a Women-Friendly Workplace... Or Else?

2. Workforce Trends

3. Applicant Processing

4. What Motivates Employees

5. Annual Performance Reviews Simplified!

6. CandidClues Assessment

Create a Woman-Friendly Workplace... Or Else?

Many employers still plan and manage recruitment, retention, benefits, and work arrangements as if the typical American family still lived in the 1960s like Rob and Laura Petrie. (For those of you too young to remember, try Googling "The Dick Van Dyke Show.")

The demographic landscape of the United States, however, has changed considerably since the one-career family was the norm. No change is as dramatic as the changing role of women in the workplace.  And yet despite the shift, many businesses continue to hang onto practices that cater to the old-fashioned American ideal of a working husband and a homemaker wife. (In fact, only 17% of U.S. households fit this description, according to Labor Department data.)

Let's take a look at four of the most significant trends that have changed the role of women in the workplace and why employers must adapt.

Marriage

Marriage has had a subtle yet dramatic impact on how employers recruit and retain employees.

Major changes have occurred in marriage and family formation patterns over the past 50 years. The percentage of adults who are married declined between 1970 and 2009, from 72 percent to 62 percent for women and from 84 percent to 66 percent for men. In 2009, 15 percent of women and 20 percent of men had never married, compared to 7 percent and 9 percent, respectively, in 1970.

When young adults married in their early teens and immediately started a family, to paraphrase an old proverb, a job in hand was worth two in the bush. A wife and child tethered the young worker to his employer.  But today young single childless educated professionals have choices - and no strings to keep them attached. They can choose where they will live and work, especially if not bound by a mortgage.

Lost in the employee engagement and retention analysis is the shifting paradigm caused by delayed marriage. One size of benefits and policies does not fit all ages.

Children

Women of all ages currently have fewer children than they did in 1976. In 2008, about 18 percent of women age 40-44 (the latter part of peak childbearing years) have never had a child, almost doubled that in 1976 (10 percent).

The typical age at which women have their first child has been rising in recent decades. There has been a steep rise in the share of women age 25-29 (early in their childbearing years) who have not had a child, rising from 31 percent in 1976 to about 46 percent in 2008. In other words, the likelihood of a woman having her first child at age 30 or older increased roughly six-fold from about 4 percent of all first-time mothers in the 1970s to 24 percent in 2007.

Women with more education are dramatically less likely to have had a child than their less-educated counterparts. Specifically, among women age 25-29 in 2008, only 19 percent of those with less than a high school education had not had a child, compared to 31 percent of high school graduates and 72 percent of those with at least a college degree.

For organizations that employ skilled and semi-skilled or lower-skilled workers, recruitment and retention efforts must be targeted to each demographic. 

Education

Women now enroll in greater numbers than men in both undergraduate and graduate institutions.

Women age 25-34 are now more likely than men of that age group to have attained a college degree, reversing the norm of 40 years ago.  Among women age 25-64 in the labor force, 36 percent held college degrees in 2009, compared to 11 percent in 1970. In contrast, the share of men with a college degree increased by one-half. Over the same period, the proportion of women workers with less than a high school diploma fell from 34 percent to 7 percent. 

Women earned about 57 percent of all college degrees conferred in 2007-2008. By 2019, women are projected to account for nearly 60 percent of total undergraduate enrollment.

Further, the number of females in graduate schools surpassed the number of males in 1984. More recently, between 1997 and 2007, the increase in female full-time graduate students was nearly double that of males. In 1998, more doctoral degrees were conferred to men than to women. A decade later, more doctoral degrees were conferred to women than men. In 2008, women accounted for 59 percent of graduate school enrollment.

The trend continues with re-training and enrollment in advanced education. Higher percentages of women than men participate in adult education. 

In 1970, only 8 percent of women and 14 percent of men were college graduates.  Today, women have caught up with men in the percentage who have at least a college degree, about 28 percent for each group in 2009

In 2008, for all race/ethnic subgroups, a higher percentage of bachelor's and master's degrees were earned by women than men. For non-Hispanic Black, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic American Indian/Alaskan Native groups, more than 60 percent of bachelor's and master's degrees were earned by women.

Labor Participation

The labor force participation rate for women-the percentage of all adult women who are working or looking for work-rose steadily during the latter half of the 20th century.

This rate increased from about 33 percent in 1950 to 61 percent in 1999. During the first decade of this century, it has held steady at around 61 percent. In contrast, men's labor force participation rate has declined steadily since the 1950s.

As part of the overall growth of women's presence in the labor force, the participation rate of mothers also increased. From 1975 to 2000, the labor force participation rate of mothers with children under age 18 rose from 47 percent to a peak of 73 percent.

The jobs working women perform also have changed as their market activity has increased. A larger share of women now works in management, professional, and related occupations. In 2009, women accounted for 51 percent of all persons employed in these occupations, somewhat more than their share of total employment (47 percent). 

Since individuals with higher levels of education generally have better access to higher paying jobs than do individuals with less education, women have been beating the pants off the men for the better jobs.

Demographic trends have in turn affected the age, sex, racial and ethnic composition of the population, yet many organizations still view talent management through a 1970 lens.  All these trends both affect-and are affected by-economic growth and technological change.  

Workforce Trends

Today 65 year olds spend an average of 2 to 3 hours online per week. In contrast, today's 16 to 24 year olds are already online an average of 13 hours per week.  However, the people who will be 65 in 2020 are forecast to be online an average of 8 hours per week.

Source: Trends Magazine, April 2011   

For more  workforce and hiring trends, visit Perfect Labor Storm website and Perfect Labor Storm blog.

Applicant Processing Made Easy

Wouldn't it be nice if selecting the right candidate was this easy?

What Motivates Employees

Business values and motivators determine the "why" of human behavior.  
 

For managers, Business Values and Motivators answers the nagging question - How can I motivate my employees?  
 

For employees and individuals looking to re-energize their careers, the Business Values and Motivators report helps them understand what they value most.  As people, we tend to value certain viewpoints positively and judge others negatively.   How we value or judge determines our motivations and provide us with our sources of energy or conflicts and stress in our personal and professional lives.
 

What are Business Motivators? Read more.

Annual Performance Reviews Simplified!

Save time, increase productivity, and eliminate hassles when administering employee performance reviews with SimpleEvals.

Ask any manager what he or she hates most about the job and you'll often hear "performance reviews."   That's why we've created HReviewer.

We recognized a huge gap in the performance evaluation market between paper forms and online performance management. 

SimpleEvals is a user-friendly, centralized online solution to streamline and improve the annual, semi-annual or periodic review for small to medium sized organizations. It's convenient and very affordable too.  Our goal was simple: to help take the hassle out of getting managers to complete performance appraisal forms and giving employees more frequent feedback. 

The system comes with a library of competencies, an easy to use form creator, at-a-glance dashboards and reports, and a built-in reminder system to help HR track down managers when reviews are due....or past due!

More about HReviewer or Email us to schedule a FREE demo. 

CandidClues™

The cost effective solution to curb absenteeism and employee theft 

There is wide-spread concern about the honesty and integrity of employees. Most organizations have serious problems of pilferage, absenteeism, tardiness, employee disagreements that lead to violence, drug and alcohol abuse, and computer misuse. The annual loss from these counterproductive behaviors is estimated in the billions of dollars. There was a clear need for a brief assessment that could be used as part of the pre-employment screening process. CandidClues™ was developed to meet that need.

CandidClues™ assesses six areas of potentially counterproductive behaviors by a self-descriptive inventory that taps six substantive areas of concern as well a Good Impression (validity) scale.

• Hostility
• Conscientiousness
• Integrity
• Substance Abuse
• Sexual Harassment
• Computer Misuse