Amitabh Sharma
Features Coordinator

The world is flat’ is the new dictum, distances are no longer measured by kilometers but by the number of digits you are away from your colleague across time zones.

With the changing and globally merging economies – the modern workplace is no exception to this change. With this change is the change in perceptions and how people hire, work or even communicate across the globe.

“In the traditional agrarian economy, it was easy to train and make people work, but in today’s workplace the workforce needs to be technically trained,” believes says Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., J.D., senior vice president of human resources for IAC/InterActiveCorp.

According to Taylor, the challenge for today’s employer is to find the right and talented people, who have the right mix of management and leadership skills and can contribute to the development of the organisation.

“In the entire world there is a constant demand for better educated and certified professionals,” he says.

Being employee friendly
There has been a sea change in what it used to be in the past, to fill a post; you could find people in the organisation. As there were not many choices, companies treated people as they wanted, says Taylor, who has an overall responsibility for the human resources strategy and execution for the 33,000 employee interactive company, which is parent company to well known companies like Ticketmaster, LendingTree.com, Ask.com, Match.com, and Home Shopping Network.

“While there is a high unemployment rate, at the same time there is a shortfall of people in the companies,” he feels. “Now things have changed, attrition is a reality that everyone has to face.”

Treating people is the name of the game – it is essential to get good people and weed out the bad employees.

It is a whole new world of employment, employee engagement and employee satisfaction is the key stakes in the success of an organisation.

Getting innovative
Companies are also becoming creative; they are finding innovative methods to make the employees feel that it is their company. They are investing in developing the skill sets and making them feel good. “Entities cannot turn a deaf ear to the employees, it would cost them dear,” Taylor says.

Employees now have the stock option, and a profit sharing plan, in this way they feel that they have to put in the optimum to get better profits and hence better returns.

Salaries are a driver but it is the attitude that counts, companies are getting more employees oriented, on the softer side – throwing birthday parties, paying for books of their children when they get promoted to higher classes, providing health insurance, subsidised specially for lower staff.

Furthermore if an employee has served for 5 years in a company, they are eligible for an $ X bonus for every year that they have served. This is also an innovative way to keep the employee from jumping jobs.

“I feel that people of Jamaica have a great customer service orientation, specially that the country is high on tourism,” avers Taylor. “The workforce needs to be prepared to be at par with international standards, this need to be understood as it will benefit the overall economy of the country.”

If Jamaica does not capitalize on this advantage, it will lose out on the globally changing economies. We need a great work force that is globally competitive if we have to compete with the India’s and China’s of the world.

There is a need for certified and credential customer service; the governments have to come up with some programmes that give incentives for industries. Like Puerto Rico, where there are tax incentives for the pharmaceutical sector.

Outsourcing makes all the sense in the world, with Jamaica having a strong English speaking population, we should figure out how take advantage of the changing world of employment and supply quality workforce that is ready for the world.

amitabh.sharma@gleanerjm.com