Category Archives: Talent

The Logistics Industry Talent Shortage Is Its Own Fault

For years we’ve been hearing about the logistics industry worker shortage which, over the years, has had the worker shortage projection increase from a little over 100K when the shortage was first reported as bad in the mid 2000s to 1.4M jobs in 2018 according to a 2014 Fortune article. Now, not all of this is a driver shortage — some of this is a shortage of talent in high tech, analytics, robotics, engineering, seasoned managers, marketers, data analysis, and even human resources — but a significant portion of this shortage *is* a driver shortage.

But why is there a driver shortage, especially when the “un”official U-6 unemployment rate in the US, which includes all unemployed persons as well as persons marginally attached to the labor force plus persons employed part time who would like to be employed full time, is still 9.9%? (If you do the math, that’s over 31M people looking for at least some work … should be easy enough to fill a few hundred thousand driver jobs, right?)

Wrong. The shortage keeps getting worse. But why?

The answer is multi-faceted but one of the big problems is the double-edged sword of perception. How the general populace outside of the logistics industry views logistics and how the workforce inside logistics views the general populace. We will discuss both of these.

The first problem is that, in the US in particular, truck driving is seen as an unglamorous blue-collar job for those who are average, lack drive, and live in a trailer park. It’s not a job for the middle class or those who are part of the respectable community. It’s hard to get truckers if you can’t even get applicants.

But this is only half the problem. The other half is that truckers believe that their brethren should be like them — middle-aged men who like to share crude jokes in old-school truck stops and who fit the stereotype of the trucking industry. If a young women were to apply for the job, she’d have to put up with funny looks and crude, disrespectful jokes, on a daily basis. This is a shame, because now that the job no longer requires brute strength, it can be done by anyone, including a woman — who probably has better time management skills, a calmer head during traffic jams, and less tarnishes on her record (which is a statistical fact).

But, as per this great article over on the BBC on why don’t women become truckers, no matter where you go in the world, it’s the same. A woman driving a lorry gets funny looks and has to listen to unfunny jokes and has to listen to things like wow, I didn’t know women could drive trucks. But a woman can like driving a truck just as much as a man. And a woman who needs a job can be just as willing to drive one as a man. Especially if it was to be again seen as a respectable profession (which first requires people in the industry to treat others with respect).

If the perception improves, the industry can attract more truckers. There might still be a worker shortage, but it would not be nearly as bad if the industry was attracting applicants of both sexes on a regular basis.

Societal Damnation 51: Talent

In our last post, we addressed the perpetual damnation of talent tightness in Supply Management, exacerbated by pinchpenny’s who will pay a dime-a-dozen salesperson an executive salary but won’t pay a Procurement superstar a warehouse wage; deep-pocket competitors who will double every offer you make; and IT departments that would rather spend big money on new gadgets than on systems Procurement talent needs to do their job.

But that’s just one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is the talent themselves. If you’re lucky enough to get your hands on true talent, then the true damnation beings.

Every Generation Wants Something Different.

As per damnation 4 on Gen X, Gen Y, and Gen Z, at the tip of the iceberg, Generation X wants stability, Generation Y wants unique opportunities, and Generation Z wants to be jacked in. (Not jacked up, jacked in.) Trying to satisfy all of their different desires is like trying to satisfy all of the different requests that will be received on a transatlantic cruise. No easy feat.

Just because they joined, that doesn’t mean they’ll stay.

The average worker today stays at his or her job for 4.4 years, and that number is decreasing all the time. And in some professions, that’s twice as long as the average. If your job isn’t their bees knees, as soon as a competitor comes along with a sweeter offer, your top talent could be out the door.

If they do stay, they’ll want support. And lots of it.

If you promised them training, they’ll expect it. If you promised they could select the new Source to Pay platform, that project better start ASAP and be delivered in a few months. If it was a senior buyer and you promised them a top notch data analyst to give them all the ammunition they needed in negotiation, you better deliver.

And the more support you give, the more they’ll want.

Top talent wants to excel. No matter how good they do, they’ll always want to do better. (That’s why you want them.) But every tool has its limits, and as soon as the limits is reached, they’ll want a better tool. Every technique has a limit to its usefulness, and when that is reached, they’ll want to learn a better technique. And so on. If you deliver, they will deliver, but you have to deliver. And with the CFO, CIO, COO, and maybe even CEO putting policies in place that drag you down every step of the way …

You get the picture. Talent tightness, and an inability to acquire talent, is a damnation, but so is the talent themselves if you manage to get your hands on them. It’s a can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em scenario.

Societal Damnation 50: Talent Tightness

Your organization is expected to deliver 6 miracles on a daily basis, and at least one before the CFO arrives for work. But, as we all know, miracles, by definition, are almost impossible. That’s why, in order to have any hope of accomplishing the nearly impossible feats put before you on a daily basis (such as sourcing an additional 1,000 kgs of dysprosium by the end of the week, even though a major mine just collapsed, and knock $50 off the price per kg [10%+] while you’re at it even though you’re in the midst of a supply shortage), you need exceptional talent.

But such talent is rare, especially when you need true polymaths who are simultaneously geniuses and jacks of all trades and a master of one (Supply Management). This says that only a small fraction of a percent of the population are even intrinsically qualified for Supply Management, and given that these individuals can, by definition, do anything they want, how many are going to want to do something us unglamorous as Purchasing. (Especially considering that, as far as the average person knows — which should not be a surprise considering most curriculums at the Universities they went to still teach decades old operational management theory as the basics of Supply Management — choosing Supply Management means being stuck in the dungeon in the tower of spend.)
This challenge is only exacerbated by the fact that:

Sales gets commissions on every dollar sold, even if such sales cost the organization money, but Procurement’s bonus for identifying value is at the complete whim of Finance.

Procurement could identify, and lock in, $100 M of expected savings on a Billion of spend, primarily through the Herculean effort of a small core team of 10 analysts, negotiators, and project managers, work with Engineering and Marketing to realize $70M of that, or $7M of savings per Procurement team member, who, because the CFO decided that they should have realized 50M anyway, decides to only credit the team with 20M of savings, or $2M per member, and give them a mere 1% of that as reward, or 20K. Meanwhile, the top 10 Sales people, who delivered an average of 1.5M each above their 1M (non-commission) quota (as they get a 150K salary), get a 10% commission on that 1.5M and effectively double their salary, even though only a fraction of the revenue hits the bottom line. For example, if the COGS is 70% and they get 10% commission, 20% of that, or 300K per sales person, hits the bottom line before taxes. But 100% of the savings per Procurement professional, or 2M in the CFO’s discount approach, hits the bottom line before taxes. But they only get a 1% reward for their bottom line contribution while the sales people effectively get a 50% reward for their bottom line contribution. Is that fair? Not at all. And that’s why you can’t get good talent and why all the high EQ people go to Sales.

Moreover, if the savings don’t materialize, or don’t materialize to the extent expected, through no fault of Procurement (because Engineering or Marketing decided to go off the plan or off the contract), Procurement will still be held responsible and Procurement will be rated poorly and the dream team who worked their collective assess off will get nothing at bonus time but a bad taste in their mouth, and instantly leave for the competitor who pays them the most (while giving your firm a bad rep in the process as they will be very frank about why they left your cheap, ungrateful, backwater organization).

Your competitors are desperate too, and those with deeper pockets will outbid you for top talent.

It’s not all about money, and that goes double for top talent, but that being said, money is a factor, and if your competition is offering 20%, 30%, and even 40% more, that’s a little hard to turn down. Especially if they are also offering flexible hours, training, course reimbursement for any course taken on the employee’s own time where the employee gets a minimum / passing grade, etc. So if your training budget is still 0, your corporate policy still mandates being in the office from 9 to 5 (even though your suppliers are in a time zone 9 hours shifted and this means everyone would be working 11 hours any day a supplier has to be consulted), and there are pay ceilings in effect from 5 years ago, the chances of getting anyone talented to join your Procurement department are slim to none, with an emphasis on none.

Talent wants to be sufficiently challenged and sufficiently enabled.

They know they have a challenge, but they also want to know they have the tools to tackle it. If you expect them to work for you, you better have some decent tools. It’s not the Procurement dark ages where the best tool available is an Excel spreadsheet and e-mail to deliver it. If that’s all you have to offer, don’t be surprised if they run to the hills.

Talent is tight, and everyone is working against you to keep it that way. Finance with unfair compensation policies. Competitors with deeper pockets. And the CIO who thinks the IT budget is better spent on new iPhones for the masses, even though they all got new iPhones last year! But this is just one side of the damnation …

Procurement Talent Management: How Do You Recruit, Train, and Retain Your Way to Procurement Success?

It’s a difficult question. Top Procurement talent is in short supply, budgets are tight, and between (brain-dead) budget cuts and time constraints, training is that magical activity that you only hear about in fairy and folk tales that begin with the words “Once Upon a Time”.

So just how do you find and bind top Procurement talent in today’s economic landscape? It’s a tough problem, but one that Charles Dominick, Founder of Next Level Purchasing, has addressed in his latest paper on Procurement Talent Management: Recruiting, Training & Retaining a Modern & Awesome Buying Team. (Because the world’s second [or is that third] oldest professions is awesome.)

In this paper, Charles notes that just like there’s more than one way to make a tamale*1, there’s more than one way to go about recruiting Procurement talent, namely, the traditional way and the radical way. Organizations that search for talent the traditional way look for people who

  • have experience in the industry,
  • have Procurement experience, and
  • have experience buying the same categories they will be expected to buy.

There are advantages to this approach in that these people are typically loyal to the industry and want to stay within it (as that is their comfort zone and they like their comfort zone), they can typically hit the ground running, and good matches are likely. However, there are disadvantages to. If you continually replace the Volkswagen Beetle with a newer model, you still just have a Volkswagen Beetle. You don’t have anything radically new, and, as such, are not likely to get the radically new ideas you need to get out of a rut.

But there is another way. Instead of looking for someone who’s good on the traditional paper, look for someone who:

  • has the personality that fits the corporate culture,
  • has influential charisma, and
  • has intellectual potential.

Such a person, as Charles notes, can bring support for increased involvement of Procurement in the enterprise (as they fit, and, more importantly, can schmooze their way into non-traditional, and maybe even scared-cow, categories) and have the bandwidth to learn more advanced skills (and use more advanced processes and platforms to get better results). Plus, as these individuals are out-of-the-box that your team is trapped in, they are likely to bring some new ideas with them. You could find your best and brightest talent this way, or, as Charles point out, you could flop as the hire might not like Procurement or, even worse, while seemingly bright with his high IQ, just can’t adapt to the Procurement way.

There’s no right way, and the doctor would like to suggest that the best approach is often a fusion of the two, where you look for someone who:

  • has a high EQ, as they have to fit in,
  • has an above average TQ, as they have to use modern tools,
  • has at an average+ IQ, as they have to be able to solve problems,
  • has an affinity for the corporate culture
    which doesn’t have to be perfect as their EQ will let them adapt,
  • has experience in a relevant industry
    which might not be the company’s industry; for example, if you need an IT buyer, why not hire someone who used to be an IT account manager, is comfortable with the technical terminology, and knows all the tricks and traps providers will throw at you (and how to avoid those expensive change orders), and
  • has some operational experience
    in Sales, Finance, Engineering or a related area that will allow them to pick up Procurement quickly.

This person, who might be used to a different box, is likely to come with some new ideas, adapt to the organizational culture, learn what they need to know, and have the potential to contribute. Now, there’s still a risk that if they come from Sales account management they won’t like the job, but considering the increased reward that will definitely come from expanding the search box (at a lower risk than the true radical approach), the doctor thinks it would be worth it.

As indicated, the paper also addresses the subjects of training and retention, which are important, but which we’re not going to cover. Even though the section on retention is quite good, as there’s nothing groundbreaking on this topic, we’d rather focus in on the discussion of the traditional vs. the radical approach, as a real understanding of this subject will help you tackle the biggest problem — finding talent in the first place. Training is easy — fight until the budget is re-instated and send your people on courses and/or bring experts in on a regular basis to help keep them current on best practices. (Given the ROI numbers, it should be a no-brainer.*2) And any company that truly wants to retain talent will do the little things that go a long way. But even the best employers don’t always know who to look for. That’s why Procurement Talent Management: Recruiting, Training & Retaining a Modern & Awesome Buying Team is a must-read for any CPO or VP who wants to build the best buying team she can.

*1 We don’t use the other phrase here on SI. (LOLCat does not approve.)
*2 But that’s the problem at many organizations these days, no brains in the higher ups. 😉

Economic Damnation 04: Gen X, Gen Y, and Gen Z

Why are:

  • Generation X, the generation born between the early 1960s and the early 1980s,
  • Generation Y, the generation born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s, and the
  • Generation Z, the generation born between the early 2000s and the present day

An economic damnation? As will be discussed in detail in societal damnation 50 on talent, talent is required to keep your supply chains moving. People are required to enter the data to keep the information chain moving, to move the money to keep the financial chain moving, and to move the goods that keep the physical chain moving.

The majority of this talent is a workforce between the ages of 20 and 55, who will have been born between 1960 and 1995, and will thus be primarily composed of Generation X and the Generation Y Millennials, and as Generation X begins to retire en-masse, Generation Z will begin to enter the workforce in a few more years.

As a result, not only is talent a damnation, but it’s a damnation that comes in three different flavours.

Generation X

Generation X wants stability. They are at least half way through their career, if not nearing the end, and they are looking for their last (long-term) full-time gig that will give them fair pay, a great pension / 401 K / RRSP, flexible hours to help manage their children’s, or grandchildren’s, schedules, time-off to help good causes and volunteer in the community, good healthcare and wellness programs (as they aren’t getting any younger), and career development — as they have been out of school for (quite) a while and need help keeping up with new skills and work requirements.

Generation Y

They are looking for unique opportunities (such as overseas assignments, travel-intensive positions, or opportunities to work with cutting edge technology or developments, even if they might not succeed), work-life balance (as they are very active), social responsibility (as they care about working for an employer that cares about the environment and humanity beyond their local community more than previous generations), modern technology (as they grew up with technology), and mentoring (as they want to learn how to succeed and thrive in the real-world).

Generation Z

The beginnings of generation Z are just beginning high-school. And whereas Generation Y grew up in the information age, where technology was becoming more ubiquitous by the day, Generation Z grew up in the communication age where not only was technology becoming ubiquitous, but communication technology was becoming ubiquitous and just about every Gen Z is growing up with a smartphone where they can call, text, and e-mail 24/7. While we don’t know what they will want from a job perspective, we do know that they will want to be connected to their friends and colleagues 24/7 so any company that has not entered the communication age will not be able to recruit this coming generation.

In other words, every generation wants something different from the workplace and gone are the days when all it took to get an employee was job security, a fair pay check and some health benefits. Today, that’s the entrance fee to join the employer’s club. If you want talent, that costs more. Much more.