Wireless Workforce: Flexibility important in stressed economy

Editor’s Note: John Williams is a human resource consultant to RCR Wireless News and TelecomCareers who is blogging on HR matters that impact the wireless industry, including hiring and retaining employees as the economy improves. This week he attended the SHRM conference in Las Vegas.
Where is HR when you need them! This week they may be in Las Vegas. HR is in Sin City? What gives?
More than 13,000 Human Resources professionals and members of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) have descended upon Las Vegas for its annual conference to focus on best-practices methodologies, networking and to soak up the wisdom of prestigious business visionaries such as Sir Richard Branson and Arianna Huffington.
Not only has the economic plunge strained the U.S. workforce (professionally and at home), but businesses are also dealing with new workforce phenomenon that impact the workforce. Forces ranging from the effects of social media to globalized business challenges and these can be seen as either friend or foe by business leaders who must raise the performance bar each year. At the SHRM Conference, HR professionals study current and future techniques to better prepare their business partners back home to deal with these challenges and to better engage their workforce using these outside forces as competitive advantages.
On Monday, Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, focused on several important workplace topics, including the importance of developing trust in the workforce. She explained that as social media serves to develop a more collaborative and meaningful experience, we have the ability to capitalize by developing trust in our environments, not just personally but professionally. This includes learning to better trust others as well as ourselves. She likened her own lack of trust in herself to listening to an “obnoxious roommate” whose sole purpose is to undermine personal thoughts and confidence. She challenged human resource leaders to trust their own instincts and passion to drive performance, but also to build trust within their organizations by promoting self expression of which social media is becoming a great facilitator.
Businesses can use expression as a means to build greater employee engagement from their workforce, a topic I will address in more detail in an upcoming blog. Employees who are free to express themselves about sensitive, business-critical issues, without reprisal, are more engaged and take greater personal ownership of the business. Business owners want to know that their employees “have their back” when it comes to day-to-day operations. Fostering an environment of self expression builds trust and ultimately, velocity in business performance.
Workforce flexibility is another hot topic at SHRM 2011. This topic may create suspicion in employers of coddling employees, but given the work-induced stress employees have endured over the past three years, work-life balance is even more important now to retain skills and to keep the workforce energized. This is something the Gen Y’ers seek as well. Huffington described how her company has implemented mid-afternoon naps and nap rooms to help employees be more productive and to finish the day more refreshed to better fulfill their roles as parents and partners when they return home. Will a 20-minute nap strain your company’s performance or re-energize it?
To shed meaningful perspective on the value of an employee’s job. Huffington recommends that employers encourage employees to “give back.” Many people live their lives for themselves and loose perspective on reality of having a job. By donating time and giving back to the community and to those less fortunate, “puts our own problems in perspective and creates a more sustainable world,” says Huffington. I would also suggest that it will bind your workforce behind a cause and raise community visibility.
The workforce is changing and by relying on Human Resource leadership to harness these changes to our advantage, our employees will become more engaged, more productive, more self-empowered and ultimately even more competitive.